Seed Core Processor Progress
A fair amount of development has occurred since my last post regarding the Seed Core Processor. After literally weeks of dealing with bureaucracy at OIT the moisture sensor has been ordered and is currently underway from England. Of course, it was just about this time that Marc Timmerman expressed doubts as to whether it would actually work. Doh!
This only served to emphasize the importance of proper abstraction and encapsulation in my architecture and implementation. Of course, this is something of a challenge given the proprietary nature of expensive moisture sensors, but I’m doing my best.
Unfortunately, my effort to open source a library interfacing with the sensor was denied by the company, which claimed it would reveal too much of their intellectual property. (Which they give away readily without NDA.) On the upside, they already had a .NET library for interfacing with the sensor, saving me a lot of tedious serial I/O programming. I’m currently in the process of abstracting and wrapping up this dll into a sensor service using WCF to be deployed on inexpensive embedded hardware near the installation of the sensor(s), leaving the data processing and visualization to a more powerful station that will connect to all the sensors on the LAN. With some more research I hope to find an OSI approved license that will allow me to open source the sensor service, leaving the proprietary Hydronix information wrapped in their dll.
Unfortunately, I don’t think the data analysis, control, and visualization module of the application is a good candidate for open source as the visualization component is proprietary and has a price tag. Furthermore, controlling the moisture content of seed to be pressed for biodiesel isn’t exactly a common activity, and would likely appeal to a small number of other people at best. However, I’m very excited to likely release the sensor service as I’ve benefited a lot from the open source community over the years.
Open source issues aside, the project is progressing if a bit slowly and unsurely. If the sensor arrives soon I’ll be able to test the interface code I’ve written, and if not I’ll be coding up a virtual sensor so that I can begin to test the analysis, control, and visualization. Unfortunately, the specifics of these activities are dependent on what techniques actually end up successfully measuring the moisture content of the seed so I’m hopeful the sensor arrives soon.
This entry was posted on Saturday, August 2nd, 2008 at 9:49 pm and is filed under Seed Core Processor. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
