About us

Our mission is to provide a software environment that both encourages and inspires your creativity and learning.  Although it is difficult for us to relate to this, we do realize that everyone doesn't want to learn how to program.  If you simply want to use our software for a specific project, we respect and support that as well.  While we are marketing a software product, it is something that can be a tool on which to begin building your future.

SCADA Support Group, Inc, (SSG) a California Corporation, is the parent company of Home SCADA.  SSG was formed in March, 2006.  Its purpose is to supply programming and system support for companies that had some form of industrial automation and needed help modifying it.  Since 1) technology is becoming less and less expensive, 2) there are MANY more homes than industrial companies, 3) folks need help determining what to automate and how to actually do it, and 4) other software and methods are very expensive and/or not well explained, we decided to offer our Operating System and training for it.  So, Home SCADA is designed to support non-industrial automation and systems; it is about anything that you want to monitor and/or control.

There have been as many as a thirteen (13) employees at SSG at one time; there is now only one.  He is Dave Fry, an original founding partner, who had been working as a sole proprietor at the time SSG was founded.  During over twenty (20) years before that, he gained Controls Systems programming experience as a Systems Programmer with several control houses, completing projects for companies and governmental agencies, many of whose names you would certainly recognize.  Many of those projects were of the "make this device communicate with that system" variety.  Operating systems and operator interfaces were created and built into more than a half-dozen embedded system devices.

The scope of some of these industrial projects:
  • Automatic product weighing and recording for multiple (12) food processing lines' quality control
  • Battery test reporting & plotting software for batteries going to a LEO (Low Earth Orbit) enviromnent
  • Complete operational controls and operator interface for municipal wastewater treatment plant
  • HDLC communication driver between an unusual, older PLC and PCs for paint mixing reactor control
  • Poll blocks of electrical switchgear (12kV to 240V) and make the values available to SCADA in MODBUS® format
  • Power monitoring device for large solar array, again making the values available to SCADA in MODBUS format
  • Multistation hazardous gas air curtain monitor and alarm for microchip manufacturer
  • Multistation (30+ stations) municipal clean water distribution control system upgrade to PLCs
  • Pet food distribution conveyor system, from a blank PLC (no program, no source) to usable in about five (5) hours
  • Remote valve control integration into municipal SCADA system using satellite communication
  • Router for serial data, so multiple protocols could share the same radio frequency

MIRTOS was created after a mission trip revealed that in remote countries many children die just from drinking dirty water.  The issue is often not that the water has any industrial pollutants, but that it has biological pollutants: Giardia and Cryptosporidium, for example.  A very inexpensive, low-powered (or solar-powered), small pump control and water filtration device to make it easier to purify water was very obvoiusly needed.  Its other required feature was that its programming and/or configuration could be changed remotely.  The Arduino® was almost the answer, but its bootloader change mode as well as the bloat and inefficiency of its programming language sparked the creation of MIRTOS.

Over the course of over 35 years, there have been so many languages used.  Some should be familiar: Assembly (about 8 flavors), BASIC and VB, C, C#, and Pascal, for example.  RLL (Relay Ladder Logic) is the historical programming language for Programmable Controllers (PLCs), a unique one for each PLC manufacturer; several have been learned and used.  Then there's older languages, of which you might be familiar: ALGOL ("Algorithmic Language", an early mathematical language), APL ("A Programming Language"), FORTRAN ("Formula Translation", primarily for Engineering applications), PL/I ("Programming Language One", used mostly for systems programming), PLATO (a computer-based learning system) and SNOBOL ("String Oriented and Symbolic Language").  Yes, some really are fossils from the 60s and 70, learned but no longer in use anywhere.

The three chevrons in each logo below represent Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, since they provide the meaning, purpose, and guidance to our lives.

Finally, ASK QUESTIONS!  PLEASE don't hesitate to ask a question.  Also please feel free to make suggestions about how MIRTOS and the supporting software could be improved.  We look forward to hearing from you!