Archive for the ‘Industrial Automation’ Category

Other uses for PHP

Tuesday, June 15th, 2010

Everything goes good with PHPIt is not often that my two worlds of industrial automation and web development cross paths. It is so rare that I sometime wonder why I still work in two separate fields of occupation at the same time. I love both so I forge ahead with a divided mind. Therefore I was pretty excited when I found an alternative use for my knowledge of PHP.
Recently I attended a training conference for Delta Computer Systems to get a refresher on there motion controller products. Classes like these give me time I normally do not have to explore further into a products capabilities. In this case the Delta Motion Controller can be accessed with a COM component called RMCLink. Using RMCLink I was able to write a simple PHP script running on a local installation of XAMPP to read and write to the Motion Controllers memory. Pretty cool!
When, and if, I have some more time I would like to write a simple User Interface that could run in a web browser. The limitation is I would have to install a local web server like XAMPP to run it. That leaves me looking for a way to run a PHP script as an stand alone application; the hunt begins.