Design Of Main Control Board System In Ship Handling Simulator

Ship handling simulator is a simulation of teaching equipment to achieve seafarer’s sailtraining in the laboratory, it has become the main form of training seafarers. Main controlboard system is an important part of ship handling simulator. It is the "communication" linkbetween the host computer and the bridge. The goal is to achieve the acquisition andcontrolling of a variety of complex signals on the bridge. The real-time, the stability andreliability directly affect the fidelity of the entire system. Therefore, the design of afull-featured and good real-time main control board system is of great practical significance.This paper described the structural composition of ship handling simulator, and focusedon the control board system working. For the problem of out of step exists in traditionalsimulated compass system of main control board, we applied lifting frequency algorithm tothe control of simulated compass. While the USB technology applied to the communicatebetween the main control board system and the host computer not only can make up for theslow transmission rate and bit error rate of serial port; but also can make up for the installcomplication, high cost of PCI.The hardware structure of main control board system is made up of the power supplymodule, the smallest MCU module and signal acquisition and control module. The systemadopted C8051F340as core chip, and chose on-chip A/D converter, LED chip CH451,rotary encoder chip AS5040, to realize real-time acquisition of a variety of analog signals,digital signals and rudder angle; using serial D/A chip TLC5628, LED keyboardmanagement chip CH451, stepper motor driver chip ULN2003, to achieve instrumentdisplay, LED display and analog compass stepper motor drive. All data and commands aretransmitted by on-chip USB controller. The software is designed by modular programmingapproach, including firmware and PC application program. The realization of eachfunctional module was detailed and flow chart was given.Finally, the debugging and achievement of each module of the main control board,proved that this scheme is effective; analysis of the measured data confirmed that theaccuracy of data acquisition and properly control methods; through the interceptedcommunications in the USB can found that data transferred fast and accurate. This maincontrol board can meet needs of the entire ship handling simulator.