Spectropribor Ltd., based in Troisk, Russia, develops and
produces devices for analysis of metals and alloys, based on
the methods of emission spectroscopy. Spectropribor's
"PAPUAS-4" described below, is an automated alloy
analyzer, which is capable of measuring wide variety of
chemical elements in aluminum, copper, zinc and other
alloys. WinDriver
was used to develop the driver for the Windows version of
the application software.
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Picture 1 shows "PAPUAS-4". It operates in the
following manner:
A sample is placed into the so-called
"spark-stand" i.e. the device, where the electric
spark on the surface of the sample is ignited. The emission
from spark is collected to the fiber-optical waveguide and
then transmitted to the Spectrometer, where this radiation
is split with a help of spherical diffractional grating.
Then light is directed to the CCD-detectors (Toshiba linear
CCD chips are used) The electrical signal from the CCDs is
amplified, converted into digital form and passed to the
external PC for software processing. The main task of the
software is to analyze the spectra and calculate fractions
of chemical elements contained in the sample.
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| Picture 1 - PAPUAS-4 |
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Spectropribor's legacy version of their
software for this application was written for DOS. When they
began to working on a Windows Operating System version, they
faced a problem with communication to their electronics. The
device comprises a custom-made interface board installed in
an ISA slot of the PC. The host PC is required to read
blocks of data from buffer memory at high speeds, up to the
traffic capacity of the ISA bus. For the DOS-version they
used assembler instruction REP INSW to read these blocks. "In
order to perform the same task in Windows, I began surfing
the web for appropriate software. Comparing RTX for WinNT,
Driver Agent and WinDriver,
I've found that WinDriver matched our application better
than others. It allowed the same code for all versions of
Windows and give us the same speed of data reading that we
has previously achieved using the assembler commands,"
said Eugene Gorsky, an engineer at Spectropribor.
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| Picture 2 - Screenshot
of the main window of Spectropribor’s analytical application |
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| Spectropribor
Application Architecture Diagram |
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Spectropribor are currently developing a
portable model of the spectrometer, which includes an embedded
computer with a FLASH-disk, TFT-display and battery power,
enabling the analysis of metals on-site, e.g. at factories or
warehouses. (Pictures 3 and 4 shows its electronic components
- pictures 3: CCD module with analog amplifier and 4 -
embedded computer with Spectropribor's PC/104-based interface
board.) The software application will be based in already
written analytical modules and WinDriver-based control
software. The first pre-production prototype is near
completion and will enter the market by the end of 2002.
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| Picture 3 -CCD module
with analog amplifier |
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Picture 4 - Embedded computer with Spectropribor's
PC/104-based interface board
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