Case Studies

Transportation
Location: Taiwan

Project Introduction:
Vehicles have become an integral part of our daily lives, but rarely do many of us consider the impact our vehicles emissions have on the environment. In Southeast Asia where the economy is booming, the rate of vehicles on the roadways is increasing exponentially. In order to protect the environment, many governments have been paying special attention to the waste emissions of vehicles.

System Requirements:
In order to implement effectual inspections for vehicles, most governments encourage qualified vehicle mechanics to participate in inspection skill trainings. Moreover, on its own expense, the government provides inspecting equipments for qualified mechanics.This lightens the inspection burden of the governments and at the same time provides more convenient and efficient inspection service. In addition, the inspecting equipment is required to be highly reliable and dust-proof because the vehicle garage is always in a mess with waste gas and dust due to daily oil change and vehicle repair.

Project Implementation:

System Diagram:

System Description:
USB-4622 (HUB) was used to integrate theUSB camera, USB-4711A (Multifunction DAQ module) and USB-4718 (Thermocouple module).
USB-4711A & USB-4718 were used to control the gas intake and to analyze the CO2, HC and CO emissions from the vehicles.
To keep records in government's database, the USB camera was used to take pictures of each vehicle's license plate. The UNO-2170 was used as a controller for this entire process.

When the vehicles are parked at a specific location, UNO-2170 will get the vehicles profile through the government's database. The operator will then double-check all the information and start the emission inspection. The system will then show whether the result is pass or fail and save the records in the government's database.
 
Conclusion:
Normally, governments and police agencies use commercial computers for emissions inspection. However, the CPU fan has to be cleaned manually and the hard disk has to be changed regularly, which makes it inconvenient for the government and mechanics to use it in outdoor applications. Despite all the benefits of commercial computers, the UNO series embedded fanless computers and industrial USB-based DAQ modules can greatly reduce the maintenance cost and tremendously enhance the system reliability. Moreover, the modularized system design can be easily upgraded and maintained.