A generic embedded device for retrieving and transmitting information of various customized applications

A generic embedded device (GED) that can be installed to various kinds of information equipment, such as manufacturing equipment, portal servers, automatic guided vehicles, etc., is successfully developed In this work. GED is equipped with an embedded real-time operating system and several software modules to retrieve, collect, and manage equipment data. In particular, the communication management module of GED can transmit and receive data to/from remote clients via both wired and wireless networks. Moreover, GED has an object-oriented application interface that flexibly enables GED to add-in or update any customized application. Three typical communication mechanisms, namely the standard processes of exception notification, periodic inspection, and data inquiry are built in GED. As such, GED is able to handle a variety of customized applications, such as monitoring, detection, diagnostics, and prognostics of various kinds of information equipment. We believe that GED possesses the potentiality of information acquisition and transmission so that it can assist all kinds of information equipment to reach the goal of equipment-to-system (E2S) communication and facilitate the maintenance tasks.