Communication Card & Control Card Design And Driver Development Of MSCIS Interface Control System

Marine engine simulator is a most important way to train modern seafarers, and the interface control system is a kernel part of marine engine simulator. The interface control system takes the charge of data collecting and transmission, like a communication bridge between the model and the operating or indicating equipments.MSCIS (Marine Simulation & Control Interface System) is a set of distributed intelligent I/O interface control system designed for new marine engine simulators. It controls the variables' conversion and transmission between the communication computer of the simulation system and the control panels. With distributed control system, MSCIS possesses the characteristics of centralization of it' management, distribution of it' functions, burthen and malfunctions. MSCIS is composed of one communication computer and several I/O interface cards containers that connect through RS-485 or CAN bus. As the manager of the whole net, the communication computer is in charge of the config and control of all the cards containers in one communication chain. The cards containers manage and control the I/O channels on the functional cards. All the functional cards and channels work independently, so that the malfunction of one unit will not impact the others.The development of MSCIS mainly includes the following two parts: the cards and the software running on the communication computer. There are five types of cards, communication card, control card, analog output card, analog input card and digital input/output card. This thesis is accomplished on the base of the development of communication card, control card, system driver and test program. The development and the thesis consist of three parts as follows: development of communication card, development of control card and development of the software running on the communication computer.The part of communication card development is mainly composed of thedesign of reset circuit, the implement and control of sharing RAM, the assignation of address and the design of EPROM program. The concrete steps include the design of schematic, the design and optimization of printed circuit board, the manufacture and debugging of hardware, the program and debugging of EPROM software, the design and embedding GAL devices. The part of control card development mainly consists of the definition and completion of parallel bus inside the cards container, the assignation of address, the applications of GAL devices and the program and debugging of EPROM software. The detailed steps are similar to that of the communication card. The development of software running on the communication computer includes the development of system driver and the development of system test program. The specific steps include the design of port-operating DLL, the realization of driver module via DLL nesting, the design of system test program, the joint debugging of hardware and software, the test and optimization of the communication chain. The successful development of MSCIS enhances the self-developing ability for marine engine simulator, lowers the cost of WMS marine engine simulator, obtains fine economical and social effects. It is a significant step to develop the entire simulator system independently.