I would like to pick to pick all of your kinds brains for a dilemma that I have.
Dilemma:
- I run a 40 station LAN gaming center.
- People come in, buy X hours worth of game time and pay cash.
- Lately, revenues seem to have fallen off, seemingly uncorrelated to the fact that electricity bill seems to be constant.
- While I use an internet cafe software, I suspect my employees have found a way of disabling it and pocketing the sales themselves. I have no way to confirm this.
Question: Is it possible to control each of the 40 stations using PLC?
- Someone comes in, buys 2 hours worth of game time.
- Instead of the internet cafe software, it will be the PLC software frontend, and my staff activates the electricity into station 5, and set the timer for 2 hours. Every week I need to print reports of the activation and uptime of each station, and by which staff login.
- The sensor/PLC attached to each station will also monitor the electricity usage and uptime of each station, for reporting and cross checking purposes.
I am at the end of my wits. At this rate, I will have to be cashier in the business 24 hours a day, and that's just impossible. I hope that tying in the power delivery to each station via PLC will stop them from stealing.
The only knowledge of PLC I have was being briefly shown my friend's hotel's installation of chillers which was monitored and controlled by GE fanuc PLCs, and it gave me the idea of using PLC's to save my business, and allow me to expand to multiple branches without requiring me to be there all the time.
I understand that I may need to rewire each of the 40 stations individually into a central location for this to happen.
Thank you all!
Dilemma:
- I run a 40 station LAN gaming center.
- People come in, buy X hours worth of game time and pay cash.
- Lately, revenues seem to have fallen off, seemingly uncorrelated to the fact that electricity bill seems to be constant.
- While I use an internet cafe software, I suspect my employees have found a way of disabling it and pocketing the sales themselves. I have no way to confirm this.
Question: Is it possible to control each of the 40 stations using PLC?
- Someone comes in, buys 2 hours worth of game time.
- Instead of the internet cafe software, it will be the PLC software frontend, and my staff activates the electricity into station 5, and set the timer for 2 hours. Every week I need to print reports of the activation and uptime of each station, and by which staff login.
- The sensor/PLC attached to each station will also monitor the electricity usage and uptime of each station, for reporting and cross checking purposes.
I am at the end of my wits. At this rate, I will have to be cashier in the business 24 hours a day, and that's just impossible. I hope that tying in the power delivery to each station via PLC will stop them from stealing.
The only knowledge of PLC I have was being briefly shown my friend's hotel's installation of chillers which was monitored and controlled by GE fanuc PLCs, and it gave me the idea of using PLC's to save my business, and allow me to expand to multiple branches without requiring me to be there all the time.
I understand that I may need to rewire each of the 40 stations individually into a central location for this to happen.
Thank you all!