DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF AN EXPERT SYSTEM ON TROUBLESHOOTING AND MAINTENANCE OF EPOSON PRINTER

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Author

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Department of Computer Science

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

11            BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

12            STATEMENT OF PROBLEM

13            PURPOSE OF STUDY

14            SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

15            AIM AND OBJECTIVES      

16            SCOPE OR DELIMITATION

17            LIMITATIONS OR CONSTRAINTS

18            ASSUMPTIONS

CHAPTER TWO:       

LITERATURE REVIEW

CHAPTER THREE:   

DESCRIPTION AND ANALYSIS OF EXISTING SYSTEM

31     FACT FINDINGS METHOD USED

32            OBJECTIVE OF THE EXISTING SYSTEM

33            INPUT, PROCESS AND OUTPUT ANALYSIS

34            INFORMATION FLOW DIAGRAM

35            PROBLEMS OF THE EXISTING SYSTEM

36            JUSTIFICATION OF THE NEW SYSTEM

CHAPTER FOUR:      

DESIGN OF THE NEW SYSTEM

41     OUTPUT SPECIFICATION AND DESIGN

42            INPUT SPECIFICATION AND DESIGN

43            FILE DESIGN

44            PROCEDURE CHART

45            SYSTEM FLOW CHAR

46            SYSTEM REQUIREMENT

CHAPTER FIVE:       

IMPLEMENTATION

51            PROGRAM DESIGN

52            PROGRAM FLOW CHART

53            PSUDOCODE

54            SOURCE PROGRAM

55            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 (JIT) 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

16                        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

17     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

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