Upgrade List

Minumum Required Electronic Upgrades for Automation Creation Skid Car Electronics

Improved Cable Junction Circuit Board:

This solves a problem with Voltage Transients damaging Front
and Rear Sensors. The sensor becomes inoperable and the Skid Car
RAM raises to full height, without control.

The previous boards used a Diode network to prevent reverse bias
voltage destroying the Sensor current and voltage regulator.
The network also dropped approx 2 volts to reduce overall supply
voltage to the sensor.

Extreme transients were not always filtered by the cable junction
board or sensor board filter circuits. The transients are caused
by the vehicle alternator coming off charge or generating high peak
voltages when charging a flat battery.

We have an upgrade which solves this problem completely. A small
inexpensive modification is made to your existing cable Junction
circuit board. The diode network is removed and a voltage regulator
filter network added.

To check if you already have this upgrade, remove the lid of the
Cable junction board box.  A 3 legged component (TO220) with a
silver tab with a hole in the middle will be installed about where
the old diode network used to be. The component name is LT1086CT,
this should be printed on the black part of the component.
Take care not to touch the component without taking static
precautions.

We can perform this work for you or alternatively we can send you
a kit in which your Electronics technician can perform the upgrade.

Please e-mail if you have interest in this upgrade. mail@automation.co.nz

Sensor Protection Covers:

In an environment with extreme dust, mud or other contaminents, 
the sensor and sensor strip deteriorates quickly.

A quick install/remove cover provides protection against these 
extreme elements. The cover design and material allows the covered
sensor to breathe, as well as providing UV protection against the sun.

Price:  NZ$30 / cover (2 required for 1 skid car)

Please e-mail if you have an interest in the covers. mail@automation.co.nz

Control Box Cable Upgrade:

Depending on the Skid Car operator will depend on the life of the
D25 Male to female data cable that connects the Control Panel
to the Cable Junction Board. Due to flexing, the cable cores
fracture. The control fault will depend upon the fractured core.

The 25 core D25 male to female cables are an "off the shelf"
product from Farnell. We could not find a 25 core robotic
cable that was physically practical ie not too thick.

We had to reduce the number of cores between the Cable junction
board and the Control Panel if we were to introduce a more robust
Robotics cable. The only way we could do this was to split
the two circuit boards in the control panel itself. There are
only 7 cores between the two circuit boards in the control panel.
The problem here is that the short 7 core cable, run inside the
control panel, provides a 1Mhz serial bus between two Microprocessors.
We had to extend this bus from 100mm to 5 metres and take care of
signal attenuation and induced noise into the long cable.

Introducing buffers at each cable end introduced CMOS gate
propogation delays shifting the send receive signal phase
relationship.

All problems were solved and the reduction in cable cores
between the two circuit boards meant that we could now use
a special Robotics cable to link the two boards over a 5M
distance. The Robotics cable is rated at over 2 million flexes
which provides years of use without failure

This upgrade can be performed using your exisitng Skid Car
electronic equipment. We have to perform this upgrade
as there are two many changes made to provide a kit.

Note: If your cable junction board does not have the transient
protection network installed, this will be performed in this
upgrade.

Please email if have any interest at all. mail@automation.co.nz