ESD Personell Grounding Tester (RFID, Label Printer, SQL, Keyboard)

Projects General Guidance
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Hello Everybody,

I want to discuss the feasibility of an ESD (Electrostatic Discharge) Personell Grounding Tester as seen in electronics manufacturing companies. I myself run a small company and would like to improve our in-house process. Currently all our staff have to test their wristband and their footwear with a grounding tester that beeps for "OK" and does nothing for "not OK". After that they sign themselves into a sheet of paper lying next to the station.

Our customers become ever more demanding and there are a bunch of really nice, but also really expensive solutions out on the market so I was wondering if we could rock this ourselves with an Arduino.

This is the procedure four our employees:

  • User places Mifare RFID chip on device and gets recognized based on SQL query, Display output "Hello Dominik"
  • User connects wristband and steps on footwear testing electrode and pushes button
  • If ESD test is successful green LED lights up, high pitch buzzer sound and Display output "Test Passed", test values written to SQL table
  • If ESD test is not successful red LED lights up, low pitch buzzer sound and Display output "Test Failed", test values written to SQL table

Guest Mode:

  • User presses "Guest" button
  • Display prompt one at a time for first name, last name, company and user puts in by regular usb keyboard and hits enter after each
  • Test procedure same as in employee mode
  • When test completed pint a label with name, company and "PASSED" with date on label printer such as Brother PT-P700

OK, so this is what I think we need for our shopping list:

  • Arduino (which one is the right fit for this?)
  • Wifi or Ethernet connection
  • SQL or MySQL Server connection
  • USB Keyboard input
  • RFID Reader
  • Buzzers, Buttons and LED
  • Label Printer connection and ability to print, I have not found much on that topic ...

How would I go about testing the conductivity of the person pressing the button (conductive surface of button) to the footwear testing electrode? Also the conductivity of the wrist band would have to be tested.

Your input and ideas would be much appreciated!

Cheers,
Dominik

Info: this is also being discussed at Adafruit, I believe both Arduino Forums and Adafruit may give great input!

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This is an example of a footwear and wrist tester by 3M: http://www.all-spec.com/downloads/scs/TM740_051308s.pdf

And here is an oldschool, very expensive Windows touchscreen application: Wolfgang Warmbier Online-Shop

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How would I go about testing the conductivity of the person pressing the button (conductive surface of button) to the footwear testing electrode?

It is quite simple, just use the system as a ground input to an input pin with a 10K pull up resistor.
We are talking about static protection here so there is no need to check that there is a solid ground, anything under 1M will do for protection so a 10K pull up would be more than enough for a check.

Also the conductivity of the wrist band would have to be tested.

Not too sure why but a ground measurement from the other hand would suffice. As that has had to travel through the body then maybe a 1M pull up would be more suitable for this.

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i am trying to do this project please wait for some time

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Well we have waited four and a half years. Pleases read the how to use this forum sticky post. And do not resuscitate dead threads.

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Total waste of time if you DO NOT have a conductive floor in your work space.

Paul