Development of an automation library for the mechatronics development system EasyKit and a typical test application

Today, the importance of developing reliable mechatronical systems in a cost- and time-efficient way is increasing. EasyKit, which is presented in this paper in a short form, is a system which was developed to assist in this process. It reduces the time and money efforts of the development of mechatronical systems. EasyKit is delivered with a graphical software development environment, which is called EasyLab. This software can be used to program microcontrollers in a simple way. When EasyKit was developed, only basic generic libraries for graphical software development were included, which made the development of complex programs inefficient. To solve this problem, a basic library for automation purposes was developed and is presented in this paper. The components and their easy usage are shown. The EasyKit system and its development environment were used for a variety of test applications. One of them, an air control test application, which will be used for calibrating sensors of air passages, is presented in this paper

Application of the “EasyKit” development method for control of mechatronical systems of small and medium complexity

It becomes more and more difficult, to develop and maintain complex mechatronical systems. For this purpose, new methods are needed for designing them in an economical way. EasyKit is a new method for hardware-software-co-design, which was developed for this purpose. The main aims were to reach a high flexibility when developing mechatronical systems for limited-lot production and the parallelization of the development of mechanical hardware, electronics and software. In this manuscript the development method of EasyKit will be presented, including the used hardware and software. This method will be compared to the recently used method for the design of mechatronical systems. During the EasyKit project different case studies were done, by controlling several mechatronical systems with EasyKit. One of these case studies, a pump testing system, will be presented. In this case study it will be shown, how a small mechatronical system can be put into operation and how it can be integrated in a larger system environment easily by using the EasyKit system