PLC for Ham Radio beacon control

[JRICE 0]

I AM NOT A STUDENT LOOKING FOR SOMEONE ELSE TO DO MY ASSIGNMENT FOR ME.

I have the software, cables, etc... and several Allen Bradley SLC's. I'd like to program one of them to run a beacon. I dabble in PLC programming as part of my job, not really a programmer. 

I'd like to come up with or copy a way to write values into an algorithm to use a PLC to send a CW message on a beacon station. Starting with some simple stuff, callsign, location, etc... And the perhaps working up to local weather conditions as I have several analog input cards. 

I could "brute force" write the rungs for callsign and location but I would rather have some way to use MOV statements or similar to write the required values into counters or whatever to control the CW output.

Any constructive thoughts on this are highly appreciated. I've searched for others doing this but have found very little on this subject and lots of posts about PLC - Power Line Communications.

Thanks,
Jon - kc8fmr

[Michael Lloyd 85]

First thought- it would be easier to use a PIC or other microcontroller to send code and there is already code out there that can be used to do it. But... I'm still interested :) 

Is the plan to toggle an output that feeds the beacon?

The SLC is much more limited in capability than the CLX box is. I need to open up the SLC software and see what functions are available.

You can use indirect, or direct for that matter, addressing and just sequence through the registers that you want to send. Timing is going to be interesting. At first look I would think you would need a dot timer, a dash timer, and a space timer.

It's too late in the evening for me to be thinking of stuff like this. I'll revisit it in the morning

73  NE5U

 

PS- if you like beacons, check out the QRP Labs WPSR beacon kits. 

[Filthy McNasty 28]

An SQO instruction driven  by 3 timers would work.

1 timer for your dit length

1 timer for your dah length

1 timer for inter-character/inter-word spacing.

[JRICE 0]

Thanks. I'll read up on SQO, sounds good. I just finished a fault tracking addition to an existing program where any one of four faults could make a "fault" light come on and the machine cycle stop. I added an S bit to strobe the fault lamp and added a bit to the individual fault states and used them to move a value into a counter to count the fault lamp flashes, start a pause timer, restart the flash sequence, you get the idea to send a fault code to the user for why their machine stopped. I hope to use some of this logic for the beacon controller program. 

I realize there are some people on the forum looking for others to do their work for them, I'm just looking to be pointed in the right direction, and I think SQO is the direction I need to go. Thanks again.

 

I 

[Armadillo852 25]

Just because I am a nerd. I would be interested in how this works out. I would never use it I don't think, but still cool.

Just a story here. Years ago I took over as a Controls Engineer at an automotive plant. One of the first machines I worked on had a PLC5 in it. (Dating myself here). It wouldn't run and had no HMI. I was new, so I called a coworker and asked where the PLC files were kept. Long story short, he actually programmed the machine to beep out Morse code fault messages. Guess it would be good if you knew Morse code. HEHE. I don't.