Design of Control and Interlocking System for a Typical Radar Transmitter

The paper presents design and constructional features of CPLD based control and interlocking units for a typical MST radar transmitter. The conventional digital hardware used for controlling the radar transmitter and performing the interlock operations has been replaced by Xilinx’s XC9572C10PC84 CPLD device. The latest state of the art devices replace the front panel switches and LEDs display. This has resulted in miniaturizing the entire control and interlock subsystems. The necessary code is written in Verilog HDL. The newly designed system overcomes the design flaws in the earlier system hardware. The performance and results of the system have been verified with the simulation and real time testing at the plant. The unit testing is performed for more than four months with continuous operation of transmitter and the test report is highly encouraging

Design and Implementation of Ethernet Based Embedded System for the Measurement of Dielectric Constant in Solids

Measurement of physical parameter is one of the most important task before it is put to use in any application. In this direction dielectric constant plays an important role, especially in solids. This is because; dielectric data helps in gaining insight into the molecular structure of compounds, estimate the amount of moisture in wood, sand and agricultural products and used for an online determination of water content in crude oil flowing in a pipeline. The main aim of the present work is design and implementation of an Ethernet based embedded system to measure dielectric constant in solids. The system utilizes frequency measurement technique for determination of capacitance using the microcontroller as a tool while most of the conventional techniques measure the capacitance using the bridge methods. Low power high performance C8051F120 mixed signal controller controls the entire assembly. The data is displayed on LCD, hyper terminal of the system monitor and web server simultaneously with date and time using Ethernet

Astrotourism in the Mara

Astrotourism offers the night sky as a product and service to be sold to tourists. We present the implementation of astrotourism in the Maasai Mara National Reserve, a renowned game park on the border of Kenya and Tanzania. By the formation of partnerships with private members of the hospitality industry, we have been able to take the first steps in the establishment of a thriving astrotourism industry in Kenya. We have leased a telescope to two lodges and conducted basic astronomy training to the staff of those lodges in the reserve known as The Mara. This training is meant to augment the traditional wildlife tourism of the area. Our team is currently assessing the viability of the product as a business model, and we are in talks with representatives from the University of Dar es Salaam on the possibility of introducing a similar product in Tanzania