7. Monitoring and control systems

Question 1

What is a sensor?

Answer 1

A measuring device with a specific purpose.

Question 2

What is a Control system/environment?

Answer 2

A control system/environment is a system that has the monitoring activity plus the capability to control a system.

Question 3

What is an actuator?

Answer 3

An actuator is an electric motor that is connected to a controlling device. It might be used for switching on or off or for adjusting a setting.

Question 4

Describe, with a scheme, Computer-controlled environment

Answer 4

Sensor -> Analogue-to-digital converter -> Computer or microprocessor (has predefined desired value for output) -> Digital-to-analogue converter -> Actuator and controlling device -> Process (if something goes wrong or everything is right) -> Sensor -> …

Question 5

What are 3 main types of bit manipulation logical operations? Describe them.

Answer 5

1. AND - Positions in which mask’s values are set to zero after ANDing get blanked. But original is retained if mask’s value is set to 1
2. OR - Use 1s where we want to set values to 1 and use 0s where we want to retain the values
3. XOR - Use 1s to toggle and use 0 to retain values