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Smarte Carte Incorporated

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Smarte Carte Inc.
Design Engineer
December 1985 to January 1989
Saint Paul, Minnesota

For over thirty years Smarte Carte has developed innovative products and services that give people the freedom to enjoy their travel, shopping or entertainment experience. Smarte Carte designs and manufactures cart control systems that you see in Airports around the United States.

This was my first job after graduating from Makato State University. I was part of a small engineering group (about 10 people) that designed cart control systems. I was resposible for the electrical and software engineering.

Two major projects spanned my three plus years at Smarte Carte. I was involved in the development of the Microprocessor Based Counting System (MCS). The Intel 8051 based system was used to gather and store data from the Cart Control Unit. Data collected by the MCS was then transmitted to a small hand held computer via RS-232c interface. We prototyped this system in the Minneapolis Saint Paul International Airport ... but the MCS System was never widly used.

The other project, included the development of the Microprocessor Based Trolley Control Unit (TCU). The TCU would replace the existing rental and return end of the control system so that Smarte Carte could control other manufacturers carts. This product was marketed to European Countries. The 8051 based product included 32K RAM, 32K EPROM, expanded I/O and a 2x32 LCD Display with keypad. This system was used to control the operation of cart rental and return mechanisms, coin dispensing and accepting devices, bill acceptor, credit card reader and a cart identification system. The prototype was shown in a trade show in Frankfurt Germany and then the project was caceled for marketing reasons.

Designed, prototyped and tested three microprocessor based embedded systems for luggage cart rental systems in airports. The Intel 8051 based systems were used to manage data acquisition, control the operation of cart rental/return mechanisms, coin dispensing/accepting devices, bill acceptor, credit card reader and a cart identification system. Application software was written using an 8051 Cross Assembler and C Compiler.

Links:
www.smartecarte.com

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Last Updated: 08 December 2006 by Chris Macgowan