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American Locomotive Seeks Customizable Remote Monitor and Control Capabilities

An Embedded Engineering Case Study

 Client Overview

Our client is a leading American manufacturer of locomotives with a worldwide customer base.

Challenge

Our client’s customers demanded customized locomotives that provided access to all different kinds of real time data, based on each customers specifications. This included, system parameters and diagnostics information to ensure the system was operating at all times and to identify problems before causing delays or unexpected downtime.

In addition, our client needed the capability to remotely monitor and control the locomotives. Meeting customer specific requirements for each locomotive, while meeting their production schedules, was going to be a risky and potentially expensive project.

Solution

To achieve a customizable remote monitoring and control system, it required a flexible system hardware/software architecture, advanced communication capabilities and specific protocols to support reliable transmission of large data packages.

To help our client, we assisted in the development of adaptable software and communication features that enabled rapid customization. This included a communication subsystem with expanded protocol support to enable the availability of real-time data transfer for remote monitoring and control of their locomotives without impacting their base operating protocol.

Some key elements of our embedded solution included:

  • Reliable operation over an underlying protocol that does not guarantee the order of message delivery (e.g. UDP)
  • Implemented notification, data transfer issue correction and failure mechanisms
  • Enabled the communication server to manage continuous communications during normal operation of the system and to overcome issues in the event connection or error conditions are presented

 

 

Benefits

Customizable Central Diagnostics System

Happier Customers

Reduced Customer Services Operating Costs

Enabled a Complex
Customizable Remote Monitoring and
Control System

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