I want to work in HMI domain and have started learning it.
In first stage I want to develop Qt GUI based touchscreen application for ARM9 board. Can anyone please suggest how to go for it and any budget ARM9 Dev board with integrated touchscreen LCD for this purpose? I want to use opensource platform as much as possible.
I know I can do it with more ease on an ARM board which support some OS like (say) embedded linux or may be Rasberry Pi with java or Qt based GUI. But I do not want to use OS rather want to develop just a simple touch screen GUI application to (say) turn a LED on the ARM board (without running any OS).
My next step of learning will be using touch screen GUI, Rasberry Pi with raspbian, where I have already found numerous resources Online.
Thanks
It may be better to just get a low end tablet or why not even a phone, much cheaper than a dev board with additional touchscreen. Plus Android is open. It may be a good idea to get an Ubuntu touch compatible device. The Pi, while cheap, is also very underpowered. A cheap tablet or phone will be more applicable, especially since official Android support in Qt is looming on the horizon. So why spend more money on a lower spec'd device with very narrow application range? Not to mention the wide range of sensors you get with a market device - cameras, compass, gyroscope, GPS, accelerometer - those could come in handy in a HMI scenario. Last but not least, graphics drivers are usually better in production devices than prototype boards.
Related
I have been doing some research but I can't find a solution for my specific problem.
We have an ancient program at work that works as a stock manager.
Now I need to build extra features but I can't use the SQL database used by that system. (kafka was here)
So I started building a program that runs parallel to the existing system.
To reduce the extra input I want to use the same input devices.
These are mainly barcode scanners, which if I'm correct, are basically just keyboard emulators.
The question: Is there a way to use 1 Usb device on multiple computers?
I was thinking to hook the scanner to the computer where I can do the most and let this computer act as an emulator for the other computer?
But I think that's as realistic as an usb splitter.
On the other hand I was thinking of using a raspberry or arduino is "the middle man" between the scanner and 2 pc's which should give me more options.
Extra difficulties:
I can't install anything on the computers that run the ancient program.
I have little to no rights on other computers I can use (kafka, you again?)
I can only work with C#3.5 to avoid triggering the overly sensitive virus detection :)
I can't set up servers
I can only run stuff in windows
I can't run installers
I have a .NET WinForms app wherein the laptop is connected to both a scale and an GPS antenna via USB. Is it crazy to think we could have this instead as a web app and on a tablet? We're looking to make things thinner and smaller (this goes in a truck.. driver doesn't need bulk of keyboard either).
Obviously the tablet would have to have a USB port (some do, some don't). But then for "stickiness" to USB devices, I'd have to have, what, a Silverlight control on an ASP.NET page? More trouble than its worth?
Thanks for any thoughts/advice.
You could write an ActiveX control or browser plugin to use the USB port (Silverlight might not be able to do what you need). Unfortunately these controls most probably will have to be installed on the machine manually (unless you want to lower security settings for the browser). You might be better off using ClickOnce with your WinForms application to simplify deployment of new versions and keep using your existing codebase.
If all you need is to read the GPS data, you should use HTML5 Geolocation API: Demo and Specification
I have connected USB barcode scanners to iPads through the USB to 30-Pin adapter with great luck. The only trouble is there is a power limitation, if the device draws more than a couple hundred milliamps the iPad will shut of the power to the device. You might have trouble hooking up peripherals that are not acting like a keyboard or a camera though.
this is just kind of a broad question to get some starting points.
I am looking to purchase a Microsoft Kinect for the purposes of doing some programming with it.
I prefer programming in C++, and have typically made interfaces using QtCreator as opposed to VS. I see that there are a couple of Kinect's to buy - the normal gaming device, and "Kinect for Windows" which includes the SDK, it seems? Do i really need that, or can I buy the cheaper Kinect gaming device? I see that there is an openkinect project out there - I assume that is the FOSS equivalent of the "for Windows" version? I think I read somewhere the MS SDK is only going to work in Visual Studio (which I have), but if its that much better, I guess I could switch to VS for these projects.
Secondly, I am interested in doing some motion capture / 3d model projection onto the 3d objects I capture. Do I definitely need a depth camera to do this type of thing? (As in - map a "monster" to a human who's moving around in the scene). This is where I thought OpenCV might come in handy - and I am especially interested in OpenCV because of its GPU-enabled features.
Thanks for the discussion (in advance)
I am working on the kinect device for reaserch projects so I think I can anwser to some of your questions...
Some Open SDK to use with kinect :
If you like QT, you will like the : QT Kinect Widget. I never test this widget.
OpenNI : OpenNI. That is the official driver of the sensors like Kinect or Asus XTion pro (also called the RGBD sensors). This API can provide you either the raw point cloud or the skeleton if you want to make a smart HMI quickly.
The Point Cloud Library : PCL. You can use this library to acquire the point cloud, and then use all algorithm presents in this library to develop you own point cloud application !
And of course, the OpenCV Wrapper : OpenCV. This will provide you a depth map (not a point cloud).
All this SDK are usable with QtCreator both on linux and windows.
The Hardware :
If you buy a kinect in a video game store, you will not be able to plug it on your computer because the socket isn't standard. You will need to buy an adapter : KinectAdapter. This adapter is required because Kinect have a DC motors, and USB can't provide enough power for this motor.
If you buy an Asus XTION Pro live, you will not need any adapter. There is no DC motors on this device and i am quite sure that is exactly the same device than kinect. I think that Microsoft didn't "invent" the kinect, but OpenNI does ! Asus bought a licence to OpenNI for their XTION, and Microsoft bought openni for their kinect :)
Your application
I never done Motion capture and 3D model projection, but I can tell you that it will be easier to do it with a depth sensor. I think the best way to do it is to use PCL to acquire point cloud and RGB image. Thanks to the plane detectors in PCL you can compute the projection of your 3D model, and use OpenCV to display the RGB data and the projected model.
This may appear at first a bit of a general question, but its actually quite specific.
Is it feasible to use (or worth buying) a multi-touch monitor for developing and testing mobile Flex/Air applications? For instance one could use the Android emulator and package their Air 2.5 app to run in the emulator, and then use the multi-touch LCD to test it out. Rather than continually downloading the app to the mobile device.
Has anyone tried this?
Brian
I don't think that would work. The problem here is the hardware isn't connected to the software the same way as on a device (which goes through firmware). In this case, it's going through the OS (which I'm not even sure support multitouch) and then the emulator(which I'm not positive will even take in multitouch input from the OS). The emulator might not even have multitouch code in it.
I would stick with using the device. I don't see why that's a problem. If you streamline the compile/deploy/debug process, it's even easier than using the emulator.
I want to be able to build my own small electronic device that just has a few buttons, and stores each keypress inside a memory.
I am a pretty experienced programmer but I have no idea where to start regarding hardware, or what to search for on google.
Please give me any info that can help me out.
Arduino boards are inexpensive and the platform is wildly popular. I buy stuff like that from sparkfun.com in the developer area down the left side of the page. At sparkfun you will also find many other similar eval boards from various vendors. I like the lillypad over the arduino pro mini only because it has the programming pins already soldered. You will want the ftdi usb serial board thing for power and programming. I am a fan of the armmite pro, which is arm based. the mbed2 is real easy when you plug it in it shows up like a thumb drive, you copy your .bin file to it and press the button and it loads the program and runs it. The blue leds give me migraines but that was solved by replacing with green leds. I have a number of the header style olimex boards, good stuff, have never used the ones with displays and buttons though. Going to other sites the ez430 msp430 is a good starting platform but no buttons which you are interested in using, the stellaris cortex-m3 based family is good I would skip the 811 board and go for maybe the 1978 or something in that range, the 811 is too easy to brick.
Most of the ones mentioned above (not the olimex boards) have sandboxes for you to play in safely (turn key development environments), but at the same time you are not locked into those environments, you can do your own thing if you like, use different toolchains, flash programmers, etc. I personally would avoid the lpcxpresso for that reason, painfully tied to both windows and their sandbox.
the sam7-h256 for example, an olimex board, is powered by the usb, and a program called sam-ba is used to load your programs into the chip. That particular board does not have buttons but boards in that family are also programmed the same way. basically one usb cable for power and programming. And like the AVR (arduino and avr butterfly are based on the avr micro) the at91sam7s is an atmel part. Atmel seems to have that edge over competitors for better documentation and support. At least my belief is that contributes to the popularity of the avr (the avrfreaks website existed before the avr butterfly and the arduino), and it certainly makes me like their arm based products.
short answer, start with http://www.sparkfun.com along the left side click on Development Tools, and there are many solutions. You want to find something like the arduino, armmite pro, mbed, that either standalone or with a ftdi based usb thing you both power the board, and have an interface for programming. There should be links on the page to websites with development tools, compilers, etc, and tools for actually doing the loading of the program on the board. I recommend trying the arm, avr, and msp430 micros, as well as different vendors (many different arm based solutions with their own pros and cons for example).
The arduino platform is a cheap and easy option.
search for arduino and netduino
What language do you program in?
Arduino uses a C like language.
Netduino uses C#.
You can get a NXT kit (yes, LEGO) and use RobotC.
I can only advice how I started:
Get a bread board and some ATMel microcontrollers (ATMega16 is perfect for beginners).
You can either buy an STK500 or you use the In-System-Programming feature, and ask someone that can build you a programmer (I recommend USBasp). When you use Linux, use AVRdude and the gccavr toolchain. Under windows, you can use the WinAVR studio.
And buy some components, like resistors, capacitors, probably a quartz crystal to make simple circuits.
That's how I started anyway.
Arduino is based on Atmel AVR, so the same Arduino or STK500 board can be programmed with AVR Studio + WinAVR combination, which is nice if you already have experience in GCC. For all additional info and tutorials take a look at http://www.avrfreaks.net