Mecalac has opted for a customizable dashboard developed by MTA for its latest site dumper. The new vehicle will be launched at the end of the year, but prior to its unveiling, MTA’s Spot has been confirmed as the dashboard for the machine.
Having a compact circular dimension of 106mm diameter and an IP66 rating for protection makes the electronic product suitable for the off-highway applications associated with site dumpers. It features a central dot matrix LCD (160 x 56 pixels) screen with configurable tell-tale lights where required.
An MTA spokesperson said, “The strength of the Spot dashboard is the proprietary MTA Studio software tool that enabled Mecalac to customize [the] Spot dashboard to meet fast changing production needs without delay or costly software re-writes.
MTA Studio, which is the easiest solution for off-highway OEMs needing customizable off-the-shelf dashboards and displays, allows for full dashboard configuration both in graphics and operating logics using programs written in C/C++, Functional Block Diagram (FBD) and LADDER.”
The graphic human-to-machine interface is ‘What You See Is What You Get’, allowing the programmer to see the graphics on the PC as they will appear on the dashboard/display, while building the application itself. The software also contains a real-time debugger and a number of libraries with various available functions the customer can choose to integrate, depending on application needs.
The spokesperson added, “Spot belongs to the growing range of MTA’s dashboards and displays configurable with MTA Studio Software. These products have hardware and software architectures that are very similar, but with a range of looks, sizes, numbers of LEDs, inputs and outputs, as well as different screen types, to meet the needs of the off-highway world.”
The electronic products currently developed with MTA Studio are employed in six dashboards and four displays, [and are] all part of a standard range that is always available and constantly expanded.
It is noteworthy that three displays can be configured not only with MTA Studio, but also with an Android environment for more powerful graphics. The offer is completed by Dyna and Actua, two actuator control modules with basic and advanced connectivity respectively.
November 17, 2017
