Stirling Engine Report 2 - IT Problems

Download link for Micromon MO:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/w1cskky4fwlw5uw/5XR1Q1v57q

Stirling Engine Progress Report 2 

Similar to the previous report, most of the work in relation to IT equipment and in this report was completed over the Christmas holidays.

As mentioned in the previous report, the Whispergen controller offers a secondary data output from the motherboard that can be logged on a computer using the proprietary Micromon MO software. The research undertaken by Thermo King did not use any of these features as they could not get a hold of the software. Whispertech, the engine manufacturers have since sold out to a Spanish conglomerate Mondragon and the marine variant I am using is discontinued, therefore there is no support available.  Through some extensive online searching I managed to make contact with Umer Khan, a former Masters student in the University of Toronto, Canada. His thesis was based on tests undertaken using a similar Whispergen marine unit and he was kind enough to share the software with me. Finding the instruction manual and installation guides was also a task in itself as they were not widely available online. Nonetheless, I managed to obtain several documents through some marine distributors.

The data is outputted from an RJ45 port on the motherboard as an RS485 signal. In order to read this signal it was necessary to purchase an RS485 to RS232 converter and wire a CAT5 cable into it. This was a difficult task to complete as there were no schematics available for the pin output from the motherboard. It was necessary to use an oscilloscope to determine which wires were carrying the RS-232 signal. 

The converter worked the first time but it appears to have been a dodgy unit as it did not work again. It is not possible to short-circuit or otherwise "blow up" RS-232/RS-485 as it is designed to be rugged. It was necessary to purchase a second one, which thankfully works consistently. As a safety precuation, a direct RS-485 to USB converter was also bought. 

IT Hardware that will be used in the test cell. Note: a spare CRT monitor will likely be used instead of the flat screen display.

Connector pinouts established via oscilloscope. 

 New RS-485 to RS-232 connector and backup RS-485 to USB connector.

Despite the success in achieving a connection with the engine microcontroller there appears to be a bug with the software program. I suspect that it is due to a corrupted installation as I am unable to access the "Maintenance Mode" which is critical for logging data and setting controller variables and parameters. With the help of Umer Khan, I hope to solve this issue shortly and do not expect it to be a major roadblock. Once I have access to the unit controller and the full functionality of Micromon, I will be able to log controller data at 1 second resolution. According to Umer, it is possible to read this data into a LabView program and have all experimental data in a single program. I intend on reproducing a system similar to this that will generate "polished" data that can simply be graphed in Excel.