Alex Burke, is a very brilliant student and loved doing robotics project and interfacing the computer to project.  He would write the programs to control project

  He acquire an internship to go to NASA Ames Research Center in California.

  He came back his senior year with all kinds of robots knowledge.  Everything went extremely well. He stayed out there for 10 weeks and learned a whole lot about, if he wanted to work for NASA.

   When Alex Burke works for Wallace Electrical Systems. He design and built a small computer circuit board  to monitor the emergency stop switch. These main belt are usually 1,000 to 12,000 feet.
If the belt quits, a miner would have to walk the full length of the main belt to find out what happened. The miner is looking for ceiling caved in or if the belt broke or if something got in the belt. Before they can turn the power back. Alex put a computer chip every 1,000 feet and a signal on the DC line that ran through the existing emergency stop system.
Most belt line in the coal mines runs a 2 wire, 24 volt DC emergency stop system. These switch were put ever 1,000 feet along the total length of the line’
Alex powered up that small computer by putting them across the 24 volt, DC voltage line. These small computers are installed in the emergency stop button boxes. Each small computer inject a 5 volt signal on top of the 24 volt DC line.
The small computer monitor each emergency stop switch to see if it open or close. If the switch is open it send a signal to the main computer and tell it to lock out the main belt line. The main computer knows the location of the open switch and tell the operator. If the switch is close then the small computer tell the main computer ever thing is ok at this location. Each location is monitor ever 3 second. The belt cannot be turn on until the main computer operator clears all the small computer.
Each small computer would monitor 500 feet down the line and 500 feet up the line.