DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF AN
EXPERT SYSTEM ON TROUBLESHOOTING AND MAINTENANCE OF EPOSON PRINTER
ABSTRACT
Most often, the printing of very important reports
have been stopped midway owing to some minor faults on the computer/printer
system. At times, due to the complexity
of the faults some maintenance personnel find it difficult beginning to perform
detailed diagnosis due to lack of specialized equipment, some of which are
available only to a few big firms due to their high cost of acquisition.
As the case may be, some of those faults may be such
that will require a very fundamental knowledge of printer maintenance, making
use of minor tools. Once the actual
causes are identified.
This project “EPERT SYSTEM ON TROUBLE – SHOOTING AND
MAINTENANCE OF EPSON PRINTER” looks at trouble shooting and maintenance
information for non-computer/printer engineers.
ORGANISATION OF THE WORK
This work is organized into seven chapters.
CHAPTER ONE: Highlights
the native, aims and objectives of the project, the general work to be done,
what it will achieve and benefits derivable there from.
CHAPTER TWO: Reviews
some literature of related subject matter by earlier authors.
CHAPTER THREE: Describes and analyses the existing system, states
its mode of operation and identities the problem facing at, providing possible
solution thereof.
CHAPTER FOUR: Treats
the design of the new system. Things in
the present system as well as the new structure and design elements that are
needed to properly implement the new system are also described.
CHAPTER FIVE: Deals
with the implementations phase, comprising program design, coding and testing.
CHAPTER SIX: Presents the
documentation of the new system, describing the functionality of various parts
of the program. It also provides a
risers guide to using the system.
CHAPTER SEVEN: Gives some
concluding remarks as well as recommends possible areas of further research and
improvement.
TABLE OF CONTENT
TITLE PAGE
CERTIFICATION
DEDICATION
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
ABSTRACT
ORGANISATION OF THE WORK (STUDY)
TABLE OF CONTENT
CHAPTER
ONE:
INTRODUCTION
1.1
BACKGROUND OF
THE STUDY
1.2
STATEMENT OF
PROBLEM
1.3
PURPOSE OF
STUDY
1.4
SIGNIFICANCE OF
THE STUDY
1.5
AIM AND
OBJECTIVES
1.6
SCOPE OR
DELIMITATION
1.7
LIMITATIONS OR
CONSTRAINTS
1.8
ASSUMPTIONS
CHAPTER
TWO:
LITERATURE
REVIEW
CHAPTER THREE:
DESCRIPTION AND ANALYSIS OF EXISTING
SYSTEM
3.1 FACT
FINDINGS METHOD USED
3.2
OBJECTIVE OF
THE EXISTING SYSTEM
3.3
INPUT, PROCESS
AND OUTPUT ANALYSIS
3.4
INFORMATION
FLOW DIAGRAM
3.5
PROBLEMS OF THE
EXISTING SYSTEM
3.6
JUSTIFICATION
OF THE NEW SYSTEM
CHAPTER
FOUR:
DESIGN OF
THE NEW SYSTEM
4.1 OUTPUT SPECIFICATION AND DESIGN
4.2
INPUT
SPECIFICATION AND DESIGN
4.3
FILE DESIGN
4.4
PROCEDURE CHART
4.5
SYSTEM FLOW
CHAR
4.6
SYSTEM
REQUIREMENT
CHAPTER
FIVE:
IMPLEMENTATION
5.1
PROGRAM DESIGN
5.2
PROGRAM FLOW
CHART
5.3
PSUDOCODE
5.4
SOURCE PROGRAM
5.5
TEST RUN
CHAPTER
SIX:
DOCUMENTATION
CHAPTER
SEVEN:
RECOMMENDATION AND CONCLUSION
REFERENCES
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
The impact of engineering age is tremendous and its
arrears of application are increasing geometrically. It is believed that the information
revolution will radically change the nature and quality of engineering work in
the near future.
Some of the
most exiting arrear of the information technology includes.
–
Office automation and computer publishing
–
Just-in-time (J.I.T) production techniques to reduce
cost and improve quality.
–
Electronic shopping and electronic funds transfer
–
Computer controlled commuter train system
–
Decision support system (DSS) that facilitate real
time control of making under battle field condition typically characterized by
uncertainty
–
Computer aids to the handicapped including intelligent
implants and experts for medical diagnosis.
–
Computer aids instruction (CAI) and aided
manufacturing.
Due to all
these mentioned arrears of computer application and more, computer has now been
accepted and used by so many organizations, by individuals for various
purposes. It is believed that computer
is an agent, which improves productivity, enhances competition.
It is
however worthy to not that 75% of all computer application generate documented
information. This is why it is said that
had copy is the spice of information.
Computer
generates printed report for adequate circulation and communication. This underlines the importance of printers in
computerized operations and environments.
Considering
the increasing number of which malfunction ‘vis a vis’ while the scanty
availability of maintenance experts, these is no doubt that may important and
urgent reports are either frustrated permanent or produced too late to serve
their purpose. It therefore become very
imperative to develop this EPSON printer troubleshooting and maintenance expert
system which will guide a non-expert through step by step approach to
troubleshoot and maintain his EPSON printer.
STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
When printers malfunction,
it is often difficult tracing the causes of such malfunctions with respect to
identified symptoms. Often, some of
these faults are so minor that virtually every user is supposed to be able to
handle them effectively without having to undergo the rigours of finding
maintenance experts. In many occasions,
the defects are perfectly eliminated by clearing the edge connectors and
resisting the plugs and printer interface cards. Some diagnostic software such as Qapuls could
also help in locating the causes of the problem.
However,
the need for a reliable maintenance service cannot be over emphasized.
Since it is
necessary for effective performance of any printer. Also it is pertinent to observe that there
are many other preventive maintenance procedures that can be duly appreciate by
the user which could minimize printer failure.
This project has been designed and preventive maintenance in a “DO IT
YOURSELF FASHION. It as well provides
most of the salient information necessary to troubleshoot Epson printers.
PURPOSE OF STUDY
The purpose of this project
or study is to give expert knowledge or guide on the rectification of several
known faults commonly developed by Epson printer and then develop an expert
software system which will give any user the expertise knowledge to rectify the
problem of his/her Epson printer.
This
project will, therefore, briefly, look at the superficial culture of
maintaining and trouble shooting printers with a view providing a number of
analytical diagnostic steps that an operator could easily implement to enable
him/her forge ahead when his/her printer suddenly develops a fault in the make
of a printer job.
AIMS AND OBJECTIVES
The aims
and objectives of this project are:-
To assemble
a knowledge base that is common to the trouble shooting and maintenance Epson
printers of diverse models. To prevent
this knowledge in a diagnostic format such that will enable even non-expert
identify and rectify minor problems of the printers especially. When the maintenance experts are not
handy. To provide a printer maintenance
teaching aid on the basis of DO IT YOURSELF.
To emphasize the concept of preventive maintenance, especially as it
effects fragile electronic of the ink of computer and printers.
SCOPE OR DELIMITATION
Even though there are
several types – laser, dot – matrix, inkjet – and makes of printer Epson, OK1,
NEC, CITIZEN, IBM, STAR, PANASONIC, etc,. for the purpose of this project, it
has been designed to focus on the most commonly found (the Epson dot – matrix
printer). This option was chosen with
the respect to the fact that this could be regarded as the (economy class)
hence need as much guide as possible both in preventive and guide as possible
both in preventive and corrective maintenance.
It is worth
being mentioned that the project has been designed and mainly flow on the Epson
and similar. The area of coverage is not
very wide, however, since volume of books and journals are regularly on the
issue. Hence this work shall not attempt
to be exhaustive.
1.6
LIMITATION
The research work cannot
contain all it suppose because of the following reasons or limitations.
TIME
FACTOR:- The aim
that is given for the research on this study is very limited making it
impossible to go further into the research.
UNAVAILABILITY
OF THE NEEDED INFORMATION:- Seeing
that only a few engineering firms exist in this country, it was difficult for
me to get much informant for the work.
TIMITED
RESOURCES: Because of
the cost in transportation and other financial demands, it was not possible to
get all the information needed for an elaborate work.
1.7 DEFINITION OF TERMS
Artificial
intelligence result when machines are made to thick. Artificial intelligence is a general term,
which expert systems and robotics lie.
The expert system technology has been necessitated by the fact that some
human domain experts delay some wonderful skill, which is lost whenever they
die thereby leaving the future generation with little or nothing to inherit
from their wonderful skill. Hence they
need the expert knowledge of a human being in a domain of activity to be stored
in the computer such that computer mimic the reasoning of the expert in some
way reaching the same decisions or conclusion as the expert himself and
effectively replacing him.
Because of
the reposition of an expert knowledge in the computer memory to enable it think
like the expert.
EXPERT
SYSTEM (ES)
The title of this work
“expert system on trouble shooting and maintenance of Epson printer” presents a
lot of computer words or term or jargon which need detailed explanation or
definition for absolute comprehensive of this and topic and the intention of
this work. I shall therefore proceed to
highlight the meanings of the terms.
WHAT IS
EXPERT SYSTEM?
According to Daniel L.
Stotink and his friends in a book “computer and applications an introduction to
data processing” expert system is also a knowledge based system. It is a complex software (program), designed
to imitate the thought processes and decision making patterns of human experts
in a given field. The expert system is
an off-spring of artificial intelligence (AI) and it is developed using the
programming techniques of A1. when the
expert knowledge of human being in a domain of activity is stored in the
computer. Such that the computer
repository of this expert knowledge in some way, reaching the same conclusion
as the expect himself and efficiently replacing him, an expert system or
knowledge based system results.
KNOWLEDGE – BASED
The repository in a computer
of an experts knowledge in a given domain as a knowledge base.
DOMAIN EXPERT
It is not
easy to effectively replace the human being with just one expert system rather,
a piece meal approach is used in which an expert system is instrumental for a
narrow domain to mimic the human being in one activity at a time.
REASONING BY INDUCTION
If in an expert system past
conditions and corresponding decisions reached are stored such that where a new
condition arises.
The
computer tries to march it with one of the previous condition, the approach is
known as reasoning by induction.
HEURISTIC
In general, the experience a
human being acquires in any are of human endeavour are often in the form of
rules of thumb which the human experts falls upon when confronted with a new
but related situation. Such rules of
thumb are known as heuristic in artificial intelligence terminology.
INFERENCE ENGINE
The knowledge of an expert
can be represented as a set of rules that allows the computer to make human
like decisions on the subject. In other
words, a knowledge – base can actually be in the form of rules and not only in
the form of tables of information which can also be used as alternative
approach. The computer program written
to shift through the set of rules representing human expert knowledge so as to
reach a decision on the current situation can be referred to as inference
mechanism or inference engine.
TROUBLE – SHOOTING
Trouble – shooting is the ac
of detecting and mending faults be it a hardware or software facility. To be good trouble shooter one needed to
understand a system better than the average person.
MAINTENANCE
Maintenance is the
performance of “prevention or remedial maintenance in order to prevent
incipient hardware faults or to correct a hardware fault that has
occurred”. We therefore define computer
and printer maintenance as the prevention and correction of faults in the
system or as knowing fault that has occurred or as knowing fault that has
occurred or that fault can occur. And
taking steps to ensure that the fault is eliminated.
Definition
in this ways two kinds of maintenance can be identified.
i. PREVENTIVE:- Knowing that a fault can occur and
taking steps to prevent occurrence.
ii. CORRECTIVE:- When the faults has already
occurred and it has to be corrected.
Also a definition of exactly what is (fault) or what constitute a fault
must be known. In essence, for
maintenance to take place a description of the normal fault (its cause) and its
remedy must be known. It should be clear
that maintenance to take place, a large information based about the fault to be
diagnose has to available to service personnel.
Also needed would be the tool, both of these items are discussed in this
project. When take within the context of
computer, maintenance and hardware maintenance.
The terms “hardware” in the brain, respectively to the brain while a
software fault might be equivalent to mis information.
Knowledge engineer is a
specialist who works with experts to capture the knowledge they possess in
order to develop a knowledge base for expert system and other knowledge from
experts and then builds the knowledge base using an iterative, prototyping
process until the expert system is acceptable.