Instrument readings online.

~Rebel~

Hey folks, not sure if this is the right place for this question, but maybe someone can help anyway.

Im working on potential online capabilities for an instrument here. Its a large machine which essentially takes readings, stores them and outputs them to a screen on the machine. We're trying to get this machine connected so that a module in it will host a page holding the archive information dump so users can enter and vew the info. Im wondering is it possible for the output displayed on the screen to be displayed on a hosted webpage as well? For example one screen shows a graph of the results and it would be fantastic to be able to show this graph over the internet to the company using it in real time, or even with a slight delay.

Is this reasonably doable?

ianhobo

Well, more info on the "machine" would be needed?
What is it? What level of access do you have?

The information that its already outputting, what sort of formats is it in? Pictures, or data files?

(You used the words "instrument" and "machine" a lot, is it actually a computer?)

forbairt

yes its possible but you've given very little detail on everything involved ...

With the information you've supplied I'd recommend putting a webcam in front of the machine screen and streaming this.

Is there an interface to the machine ? have you read the machines manual ? (is there a serial port out of the machine)

as ianhobo said without more details its quite hard to help

phil

If it's possible to read the information from the machine (network connection, serial port etc.) either directly or via another computer that has network connectivity, then yes, this is achieveable. Your very vague "machine" term however doesn't make it easy to guess if this is possible.

~Rebel~

Thinking has changed a bit on this one.

First of all, yes it is a form of computer, in that it has a processor (R9), and does all the workings with the readings it takes. It moniters pollution levels (or anything you want really, TOC, Effleunt, Alcohol, whatever you want).

Just checked out about the last question. The processor sends the info to the display panel (black and white LCD) via RS232 and its displayed using C (draw line commands). The machine has buttons under the display for the user to navigate through the menu system to select graphs or text readings etc.

As far as access to the machine goes its total, its built here.

Have changed from trying to get a live feed to actually allowing the user to go go into the webpage hosted on a module within the machine which will be connected to the processor so that we can directly contact it, sending the commands from the physical buttons through the computer/website so the navigation system will be controllable remotely. In turn the plan is for the drawline commands to be requested and sent to a page which refreshes every second or so (possibly viewable on the main page through an iframe or something so the whole lot doesn't need to refresh) so the user can effectively control it remotely and see the results/graphs etc on their screen.

Now im talking about this from a hypothetic sense (im more the ideas man then the programmer, who won't be hired till everything is decided on what is required), so does this all sound reasonable and doable?

<edit> yes there are output ports. At the moment, it can be physically connected to a laptop on site with the archive of results being sent out. Sorry for the vague first post, hoe this one helps!

forbairt

Yes I'd assume its possible but it could be quite complicated to do ...

The interfacing to the machine will be the tricky part .. you say you built the machine yerselves therefore I'd assume you have access to the programmer of the machine ? so you could address questions to them ?

Also there are security concerns this raises ...

not knowing what it is .. if someone is working at fixing something and someone remotely turns it on ... this would be bad ?

Also you'll have to control the access to the system as you're potentially letting the world play with your toy .. unless you're only talking about an internal system within your company but still you'll have to control access to it

~Rebel~

forbairt wrote: »

Yes I'd assume its possible but it could be quite complicated to do ...

The interfacing to the machine will be the tricky part .. you say you built the machine yerselves therefore I'd assume you have access to the programmer of the machine ? so you could address questions to them ?

Also there are security concerns this raises ...

not knowing what it is .. if someone is working at fixing something and someone remotely turns it on ... this would be bad ?

Also you'll have to control the access to the system as you're potentially letting the world play with your toy .. unless you're only talking about an internal system within your company but still you'll have to control access to it

Im just here basically as a consultant (did other work for them in the past and just finished a multimedia masters so they asked me to take a look at this for them) to check out all the possibilities and then find people to make it happen. I asked the programmer alright but his knowledge of internet technology is especially limited, but he seems to think that we should be able to have this module connected to the processor and issue and receive commands directly (button commands and screen draw commands), but i wanted to check on here just to be more sure about it with people more knowledgable then ourselves

The security thing won't really be an issue for us, it will probably only be available over intranet or behind the plants own proper security, it definately won't be available to the world at large without restricted clearance. It'll be used by the likes of Glanbia, Shell, Coca Cola etc so in most cases it will largely be used for the in plant technician to be able to keep an eye on it, without having to traipse out to it in person.

ianhobo

If you have a) physical access (which you say might be possible) and
b) a lot of documentation! then yes it my be possible, but it doesn't sound like it will be either quick or easy.

Some more questions (and stuff!):

you say you want to host a module on the machine, how can this be achieved? is it some flavour of linux/unix where you can write a driver and install it?

The processor sends the info to the display panel (black and white LCD) via RS232 and its displayed using C (draw line commands).

Nothing you can do here without major work, with both software and/or hardware. (I like the webcam idea though!)

In turn the plan is for the drawline commands...

Do you have the full API for these? Do you know if there is a graphics library involved (OpenGl etc) or have these been custom written to match the display hardware?

This system most likely runs a real time OS, in order for you to "write and install a module" , and for it to work without screwing up the system, you will need some sort of API for the OS in order create the relevant threads, resources, use memory, ports etc

I'd say it would be worth finding out more info about these other ports you say are available.
How are the archived results sent out? Are they streamed, or requested? I again presume that you have special software installed on the laptop to interpret these results?

ianhobo

~Rebel~ wrote: »

I asked the programmer alright but his knowledge of internet technology is especially limited, but he seems to think that we should be able to have this module connected to the processor and issue and receive commands directly (button commands and screen draw commands), but i wanted to check on here just to be more sure about it with people more knowledgable then ourselves

Ask him how he reckons hell be able to do this!!!! Physically connect? Like through of the ports? Or installing a software module

~Rebel~

ianhobo wrote: »

Ask him how he reckons hell be able to do this!!!! Physically connect? Like through of the ports? Or installing a software module

this would be physically connecting through ports in each. ill find out about the rest!

oh and yes the module does run on Unix, its just an off the shelf thing, have the link to it on my laptop at home, will post it up later.

So you reckon the same draw line commands won't work if applied to a webpage viewed through computer rather then the display panel?
The archive results at the moment are just given out in a simple text document format which is updated each time the macine puts out a new result e.g

03:55:35 01-01-70 S1:2  TN       -4.3 mgN/l
03:55:35 01-01-70 S1:2  OOP      10.5 mgP/l
03:33:13 01-01-70 S1:2  TP       -0.0 mgP/l
04:03:02 01-01-70 S1:2  TIC       0.0 mgC/l
04:03:02 01-01-70 S1:2  TOC       2.0 mgC/l
04:03:02 01-01-70 S1:2  TN       -3.8 mgN/l
04:03:02 01-01-70 S1:2  OOP      10.2 mgP/l
04:10:30 01-01-70 S1:2  TIC       0.0 mgC/l
04:10:30 01-01-70 S1:2  TOC       1.0 mgC/l

Thats all is required for viewing whats going on. on the machine itself you can also navigate through to view simple graphs of whats happening. i was also thinking of having an option to have the last few results in the results text file put into a graph to show the trend.

cheers for all your replies so far anyway lads, great to have people to bounce to bounce this stuff off.

misterq

You would absolutely not want to try and connect the machine directly to the internet.

What you would need to do is take the output from the RS232 cable and pipe it into some form of database or other storage container.

From there it could be both accessed locally and from the internet.

There may be other ways of doing it, but to my mind, anything else opens up lots of security issues and probably a lot of headaches.

So, you would be talking:
Machine -> RS232 Cable -> Computer -> Database on Computer -> Web Server on that computer or elsewhere

The above is quite easy to do technically.
Connecting trying to access the machine directly from the net, not so much...

And again just for emphasis, it does not sound like this machine was designed to be accessed from the net, so be aware that is probably as secure as wet cardboard.