Sponsored By
Efika 5200B Project
EFIKA Measurement Stationin category Applications & Software
proposed by jan on 10th April 2006 (accepted on 14th April 2006)
Project Summary
[Basic description]My idea is to build a software system to use EFIKA as a small Linux* based measurement station. The station can be accessed via a network connection and controlled via a web interface. Some kind of functionality to control several stations at once from one control panel should also be implemented. A station should also be able to function as a stand alone device without a network connection.
*(I will try to make the system as portable as possible so that it can run on other operating systems as well.)
[Processing power]
Since the EFIKA has some processing power on the board it might be possible to do a lot of processing on the board itself and deliver results to some monitor software over the network. One should be able to configure the station to report back or to just store measurement data until it gets contacted.
Another plus with the processing power available is that it might allow some cryptographic functions to be implemented. So that the integrity of the data can be verified after it has been transmitted over a noisy/insecure connection.
[Easy to adapt]
The station should contain a basic framework as described above. It would be nice if users could just construct a software module and tell the system to feed the sensor data to the module and then store or transmit the result that the module produces. One of the primary goals is that the software should be generic and that the station should be easy to adapt to different users needs.
[Redundancy]
Some kind of redundancy should be implemented. At this point I am not sure at all regarding what the best solution should be. Perhaps built in support for multiple sensors in a TMR configuration as well as redundancy with several EFIKA stations that determine the correct result/measurement by voting.
At the first stage of the project I will concentrate on building the software described above aswell as some software to control multiple stations at once over a network. At this point I will assume that sensors can communicate via the USB-buses and/or the RS232 port. If time permits it would be cool to build a device which acts as a bridge to other interfaces. Perhaps by using a FPGA development board with PCI connector and a free PCI IP core to keep costs at a reasonable level.
Project Blog Entries
I have written a small framework for the station. Most of it will probably be scrapped when i revise the thing. Over the weekend I'll try to decide on a good database to back the data collection.
I've been quite busy over Christmas and did not get a chance to play with the Efika. Today I got the last pieces of hardware to get the Efika running in a comfortable way.
Things are progressing. I'll try to have a beta up and running in a few days. The thing that worries me the most at this point is the UI. HTML and layout has never been my cup of tea. However, this will give me a chance to (finally) get serious about ruby or python.
Now things seem to be going forward. Apparently the EFIKAs will ship in November. Great news, time to fire up the editor.
The project was approved!
In the near future I will take all my ideas and try to write them down in some kind of (more detailed) specification.
I have a general idea of what software and development tools to utilize. But I'm going to have a look around before deciding anything. A while back I stumbled upon a research project that needed developers to write software for a SBC that would collect sensor data. If I can find that project I might be able to get some valuable input/steal some ideas.