A distributed system to automate labor-intensive industries and building supervision

The present paper describes a distributed system, which purpose is to control and manage the operation of different electrical and electronic systems and other equipment. The system was designed to be installed over already in place nonautomated devices, delivering all relevant data either to machine operators or managers; different formats are used in these messages, leading to a hierarchical control and supervision. The system was developed on industry demand, primarily to achieve building supervision and control. It allows real time control of different devices and systems as a simple intrusion detector to an, already in use, industrial network. Several intelligent controllers were developed and are presented. The system can have different topologies and interconnect, through gateways, to already installed networks. The different level algorithms used either at the PC or the controllers are described and discussed. We also present the work we are carrying out to allow the interconnection of the system to a WAN, allowing an authorized user to supervise the system