T. H. E. Solution LLC is a Greenville, South Carolina limited liability company that specializes in helping small and medium sized clients to get the most from their products by applying sophisticated software.  Some examples of recent projects follow.

Put a PC on the Factory Floor

Generic problem: Harness the the power and economics of PC based industrial automation.

Specific problem: Replace a PLC based control system for an industrial scale with a PC based system.

Solution: Extend Embedded Windows NT with VenturCom's RTX and add custom real-time application.  The new software system included:

• A Visual Basic based man-machine interface
• A real-time C++ based machine control process.

T. H. E. Solution’s role: Served as the client’s lead software engineer.   This included software architecture design, development process delineation and the initial implementation of key parts of the software.

Extend Cheaply

Generic problem: The control, configuration and support of embedded devices.

Specific problem: Provide means to deliver telemetry data from a a deeply embedded platform in the most economical manner.

Solution: Low cost "telemetry" board using TCP/IP on a chip.  The board uses:

• Proprietary protocol over a TCP/IP socket with a third party telemetry server.
• MultiTech SocketModem IP or SocketEthernet IP parts.
• High reliability CAN connection with the devices controller.
• The same C code supports mutiple versions of the device and both versions of MultiTech parts.

T. H. E. Solution’s role: Served as the client’s Software Engineering department.   This included project management, technical requirements specification, architecture and detail design, implementation of device firmware and the prototype/testing version of the telemetry server software and development release testing.

Extend the Old

Generic problem: The control, configuration and support of embedded devices.

Specific problem: Provide means to support a distributed network of legacy embedded devices with sites ranging from large actively managed to small quasi lights-out.

Solution: Win32 platform front end; desktop platforms for large, actively managed sites and CE devices for small, lights out operation.  The Win32 platform uses:

• Proprietary protocol over a TCP/IP socket, configurable for RAS/DUN dial-out, connection to a site support server for content updates and remote diagnostics.
• Basic scripting capability to control the conversation with devices.
• Automated operations to periodically perform updates and device checks.
• High reliability point-to-point serial connection with the device(s).
• The same C++ source code for all the platforms from a desktop running Windows 2000 to a palm-sized device running Windows CE.

T. H. E. Solution’s role: Served as the client’s Software Engineering department.   This included project management, technical requirements specification, architecture and detail design, implementation of device firmware enhancements and Windows software and development release testing.

Bring in the New

Generic problem: Replacing a software system with the least amount of pain and risk.

Specific problem: Replace the control software in a robotic manufactures complex industrial multi-robot system.

Solution: Reduce the replacement cost, time and risk by using proven third party software as the main building block in the system.  The new software system included:

• Cimetrix CODE.
• A proprietary back-end interface to the systems PMAC controllers.
• A front-end framework and toolkit that significantly simplified the development of customer applications.
• A proprietary tool that removed all the complexity of building an application specific Cimetrix work cell model.

T. H. E. Solution’s role: Served as the client’s technical director.   This included system architecture definition, software architecture design and the initial implementation of the front-end software.