machine state equivelant

Hello,

A few days ago, I was doing a presentation about our company's activities and I was talking about our SCADA solutions.

Someone asked me: Does your SCADA system supports "Machine state equivelant"? (or something like that!!)
It was the first time I hear the word!

So did anybody here ever heared about this thing? (There is a probability that this person is mixing things!)

Thanks in advance

ayman metwally,

"Machine" language is an old early computer language term which referred to the lowest level (as opposed to highest level User programs) of programming language on a particular computer. Normally this is the Assembler program language, also called Assembly Code. This consists of a small (100-200 instructions) of very basic commands, such as LOAD, ADD, SUB, MUL, DIV, DEC, INC, and so on). I suppose that "Machine State Equivalent" would refer to a way to view the Assembly code of whatever computer or PLC that you are looking at. This ability would not be useful to anyone except a machine language programmer and those are few in number. In fact I know of no one who attempts to program in machine language. At best, there are those programmers who can use de-coder programs to view and understand the machine code.

I may be wrong but if they asked me that I would think it meant where in the process its at at that time..example: a batching system. The process starts with it feeding material into a conveyor and filling a hopper. This would be shown by the scale(s) showing the amount of material as its being fed. Once all material is fed into the hopper it shows it going into a mixer, this operation is displayed maybe by the hopper level increasing then a gate opening to drop material into a mixer. The mixer is shown turning...at same time you can see the process start over feeding and filling the hopper. Once mixed it drops into a feed or bagging hopper depending on product.

Seems to me that state means ....where at this time.


.

That's my guess also.

They might also be refering (related to) mnemonic programming, which is essentially the same as assembly.

Like so...

In fact I know of no one who attempts to program in machine language.

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While that may be true nowadays, when I was heavily involved with PDP11 based Process Control Systems in the '70's and '80s, I used to much prefer to program in machine code rather than assembler. You could do things in machine code that the assembler wouldn't allow and I used to regularly write test programs several hundred lines long that way - and then hammer them in over the key switches.

Ah, the good old days!

Does your SCADA system supports "Machine state equivelant"? (or something like that!!)

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You guys are all thinking that he was talking about "machine code" i.e. assembler.

Maybe he was talking about "State machine". "States" is a way to represent the steps in an automation sequence. A "state machine" is the programming method that is used to implement the states in the (PLC) program. I use state programming myself.
There are shrinkwrapped programming environments that allows you to define states with relative ease. One of these is "HiGraph" which is an addon for Siemens STEP7.
(finally coming to the point)
I belive that Siemens WIN CC (a SCADA system) can display the states made in Higraph (maybe with an addon).

If the state system isnt too complex, then it is not difficult to create your own visualisation of the states in the HMI. I also do that.

ayman metwally said:

Someone asked me: Does your SCADA system supports "Machine state equivelant"? (or something like that!!)
It was the first time I hear the word!

Click to expand...

Me too. I would have asked him to clarify his question. Every once in a while you run into some one ( an insecure jerk ) that asks these questions to make you look like you don't know the answer. You must realize that is is impossible to know the answer to an impossible question. That is why I like to turn things around and ask for a definition or clarification of the question. Often this reveals the question makes no sense.

If the question was valid I believe the question was "does the supervisory control have the ability to do state machines?" I doubt this has anything to do with assembly langauge.

BTW, I was doing some 186 assembly language programming today. STL or IL is like assembly language. Assembly is not dead yet.

STL or IL is like assembly language. Assembly is not dead yet.

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Precisely!

Re: Re: machine state equivelant

Thank you all for your responses

I really think that "Machine state equivelant" -if it does exist!-

has nothing to do with machine language, simply because what is the use of this kind of feature in SCADA systems?

I think that this thing -again if it really does exist!- is like most of your guess, It's the ability of the SCADA system to equalize the current state of a machine.

Peter Nachtwey said:

Me too. I would have asked him to clarify his question. Every once in a while you run into some one ( an insecure jerk ) that asks these questions to make you look like you don't know the answer. You must realize that is is impossible to know the answer to an impossible question. That is why I like to turn things around and ask for a definition or clarification of the question. Often this reveals the question makes no sense.

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Well I actually did!

I asked him: Whould you please explain this to me, sir ?

He said: ahhm, It means, for example , if we have a silo and the valve is *&@$#*$ when it is $@#%#^!@$ , this wil cause a !@#@%^%&^ and @!$@#^ .... Ok, never mind .

So, I passed this point and proceed with the presentation.

Thanks all again for your inputs.

Hi,

he probably talked about 'State Estimation'.
I've never heard it before, so I startes google
and have typed in the terms ;State;Estimation;Scada

I've found this:

Visualization and Animation of State Estimation Performance

A reliable and accurate real time model of a power system
is of paramount important for effective control and
operation of the system. The real time visibility of the
system is achieved with the use of the SCADA system
and processing of the SCADA data via state estimators.
The end result of this process is expected to be a reliable
and accurate real time model of the system.

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No idea, thats a bit over my head

greetings
Rolf

He said: ahhm, It means, for example , if we have a silo and the valve is *&@$#*$ when it is $@#%#^!@$ , this wil cause a !@#@%^%&^ and @!$@#^ .... Ok, never mind .

Click to expand...

I think that there is a good chance that he was taking about states ("if we have a silo and the valve is *&@$#*$") and transition between states (" when it is $@#%#^!@$ , this wil cause a !@#@%^%&^ and @!$@#^").
Impress him with some knowledge about state machines and check if your SCADA package can seamlessly integrate state machines.

I think RolfB has the right idea with state estimation. This makes more sense in process applications than a state machine which is more applicable to machine sequencing.