College - Author 1

College of Engineering

Department - Author 1

Electrical Engineering Department

Degree Name - Author 1

BS in Electrical Engineering

College - Author 2

College of Engineering

Department - Author 2

Electrical Engineering Department

Degree - Author 2

BS in Electrical Engineering

Date

6-2020

Primary Advisor

Taufik, College of Engineering, Electrical Engineering Department

Abstract/Summary

Currently, the Industrial Power and Controls lab is being developed by the Cal Poly Electrical Engineering department. The lab is equipped with recently donated Modicon M580 Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) from Schneider Electric. In addition to PLCs, Schneider Electric also donated Human Machine Interfaces (HMI) and input/output modules. This project focuses on the creation of a lab experiment that will give future Cal Poly electrical engineering students hands-on experience with this equipment. To show students the broad range of PLCs and the role that electrical engineering plays in various industries, this experiment focuses on the agriculture industry, but more specifically, an automated indoor gardening system. Originally, the main goals of this project were the complete simulation and hardware test of a possible lab system, along with a corresponding instructional manual for the usage of the HMI in conjunction with the PLCs and input/output modules. Due to COVID-19, the hardware portion of this project was put on hold, along with the full instructional manual. However, a fully functional simulation using one of the PLC programming languages, function block diagram, allows for straightforward hardware testing in the future, when this project is turned into a full lab experiment. Although the hardware components have already been chosen and will appear in the bill of materials, they must still be tested before being put into use for the experiment. In addition, instructions on the HMI setup were also detailed, and will be important for the official lab manual.

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