The (very expensive) case of the lost SPLatWare A customer visited us yesterday with a broken SPLat controller. It was an ancient MMi99 (great-grand father of today's MMi202). It had been controlling a sophisticated hydraulic steering mechanism in a gigantic fruit picking machine for the last 6 or more years. It failed because rats had nested in the machine and chewed up great slabs of wiring, leading to a short circuit. The machine downtime was reportedly costing the owner $10,000 per day. This machine control had been programmed by a sub-contractor to the machine builder. This programmer had long since departed the scene. He left behind a number of re-writable CDs with the various SPLat programs he had written. When the smelly stuff hit the fan 2 days ago the machine maker dug out the CDs, only to discover that the one with the critical program was unreadable! So yesterday the auto electrician from site had driven 8 hours overnight to Melbourne with his assistant and one severely smoked SPLat board. Along with the machine maker they visited us yesterday, hoping we might be able to magically solve their problem. Could we help? Well, the board was totally wrecked, with the processor dead. That meant there was no way to read out the SPLat program (which, by the way, we don't have the tools for ... once a program goes into a SPLat it cannot be extracted, something we consider a security feature). We tried reading out the CD on several computers, with no luck. We did a quick google and gave them the name of a local data recovery service. So here we have it: A $10,000 a day machine sitting stalled, and fruit rotting on the tree, because there was no way to get a program into a replacement board. A fine SNAFU! When we write SPLatWare for a customer, we provide the customer with a copy of the source code, once they have signed off on it. We also keep it on our systems. We have a series of portable backup drives, which are moved off site every night (and replaced every few years). All in all every file exists on at least 8 different computers or removable drives in at least 2 locations. It would take, literally, a small nuke to eradicate all copies. What do you do to protect your valuable programs and business data? Are you in a situation where you have a moral (and possibly legal) responsibility to be able to repair and reprogram your customers' machines quickly? Keeping secure copies of the programs is at least as important as good mechanical drawings and wiring diagrams. Computer writable CDs are not a reliable storage medium. There are reports of retention times as low as 3 years. Leaving one in sunlight can damage it sooner. One of our technicians records a lot of CDs and DVDs, and reckons 1 in 20 fails to write, but every-day software does not by default verify after writing! No electronic medium is 100% reliable. You must devise backup strategies that allow for imperfections, using redundancy and periodic re-generation of data. |
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Featured product: SX10504 fluid levels and analog I/OThe SX10504 is an Xwire peripheral board compatible with all SPLat controllers. It has 5 levels of fluid level detection, two 10-bit analog outputs and 3 10-bit analog inputs with 5V, 10V, 20mA and thermistor settings. This board is ideal for applications where you need to control the level and temperature of aqueous liquids in a tank or processing vessel. Applications include:
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Have you seen our easy to digest Finite State
Machine tutorial? |
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"I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great |
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Dolphins are so smart that within a few weeks of captivity, they can train people to stand on the very edge of the pool and throw them fish.. |
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