The design, development, and demonstration of a web-based automated pressure sensor calibration test bed system are presented in this paper. The objective of the test bed is to showcase a virtual ship prototype with various network-capable pressure sensors and to validate the feasibility of remotely calibrating pressure sensors using the World Wide Web. The test bed includes four types of pressure sensors: a Honeywell digital pressure sensor with RS-232 output, an Omega analog pressure sensor, a Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) pressure sensor from ISI, and a custom-made ZigBee-based wireless pressure sensor. All sensors are ultimately connected to a TCP/IP network. The test bed allows remote and automated calibration of these pressure sensors through a web browser. The user selects a target pressure sensor to be calibrated from a graphic user interface (GUI), which leads to another GUI embedded with a Java Applet, displaying the real-time pressure readings as well as the current calibration constants. One click on a button initiates an automated process of applying pressure to the target sensor at the pre-determined pressure values, recording the readings from the target sensor and the calibration standard, and calculating the new calibration constants. The operation of the test bed has been successfully tested and evaluated locally and remotely.
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