We have a laboratory stand for the study of pneumatic sowing apparatuses. During the operation of the apparatus, the sowing of seeds is carried out on an endless adhesive tape of the conveyor. Evaluation of the sowing apparatus is carried out manually by measuring the distance between the sown seeds and further statistical processing of the results. How can electronic or other meters be installed to eliminate manual labor?
We are sincerely grateful for the information.
Feruza Alimova
In General, Two valves are often used to regulate pressure. One valve controls the inflow and the other the exhaust. Internal pressure sensors monitor conditions and give signals to the electronic controller, which interprets the data using PID or equivalent algorithms.
While it is a good idea to measure this information directly from the sowing machine like Qamar suggested, in a case where the sowing machine is actually the thing being measured here with Quality controll in mind. I would do that, and more!
Namely, in such case I would implement redundancy, so you can have more reliablity in your measurements. This is done in case your conveuyor belt or other systems are not funcioning as expected due to wear or other external factors such as bad design in any of the diciplines that were used to fabricate it.
Your best option here, would be to add an Optical Control System(OCS) using a camera(patterned conveyr belt such that you can calculate speed from camera footage if needed) and an independent spedometer,
OCS system is not unsimilar to a Measuring tape-app in Iphone 12(that I know of), but less sophisticated, more robust and a proven technology for quality controll in massproduction. DON'T use any kind of Iphone for this :D
Similarly, if the environment where you sow your seeds is not too noisy(varied elevation profiles, nonuniform textures/colors in the baground e.g. soil is very noisy vs clean monolithinc table) and "seeds" you use are big enough, you could just use Laser Beam Interruption Counter(kind of like people counter at the shop doors) to mark the time when seed passed the sensor then calculate distances from separately measured speed of the conveyor belt. This is possibly cheapest way to automate quality controll of your apparatuses in the long run, as OCS systems usually come with a hefty price tag while are more reliable and scalable.
PS. All optical system need a solution that deals with vibrations coming from machines around it!
Maksim Korobkin has explained it very well and it would certainly work in various conditions. But it is also good to keep in mind what are the actual requirements of the application and not to over specify the required system. Measurement accuracy requirements were not specified in the original question.
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