Greene & Morehead Engineering, Inc.
“The Motion Commanders”
My first experience with industrial automation was helping to develop a robotic arc welding system for the U.S. Army while in grad school at the University of Illinois. Apart from brief interludes designing missile flight controls and telecom switching equipment, I’ve been writing software for industrial automation ever since.
The many machine control applications that I’ve been involved with have quite a few elements in common: UI screen navigation, runtime update engine, user login, alarms and message logging, device communication, debugging tools, etc, etc. The first few weeks of a new project usually involve getting this infrastructure built and running reliably.
What I’ve done with Motion Commander Foundation is to create a set of libraries on top of Microsoft’s excellent .NET Framework so that developers can begin machine control projects on day-one with these elements in place, debugged and looking professional. Furthermore, I’ve recommended a structure for the remainder of the application that will enable developers to focus on the unique aspects of their projects; the business logic and operator screens.