A few thoughts about Eclipse

I feel compelled to write a few words about my move to Eclipse which I'm now using to develop my Java data logger. Prior to this I had been using Processing but found I missed the features and facilities I knew existed.

In awe at Eclipse

It's been a couple of months of very steep learning but what a program Eclipse is! Certainly no regrets. Obviously learning the syntax and semantics of a new object orientated programming language is going to be a challenge but Eclipse does it's best to help. Rather like having a team of very talented programmers constantly at your shoulder. It's also a little humbling. To produce programs like that must require such a talent and experience.

The good and not so good Java reference sources

In contrast, these attributes can often hinder when creating legible documentation for mortals and this I have found in the official Oracle tutorials. A good source of information when you've attained a certain level of proficiency but difficult when starting out. If it wasn't for Tutorials Point I would have been really struggling!

Next version of Data Logger nearly ready

It was the end of January when I posted last so it's taken 2 months to produce this latest version. That said it does represent a significant effort both to get familiar with Java and Eclipse not to mention the XBee's.

Harnessing the power of XBee's worth it

There were times when I wondered why I'd introduced so many changes at once but it now feels worth it to be able to harness the power of these little wireless devices. There's no doubt that this technology will be more and more common place in our everyday life. For example a service engineer recently told me of a support call that would have been perfect for a simple monitoring system. The type that the XBee's would be ideally suited to provide.

A real life application

The user was reporting that the boiler was not working on a recently installed system. On investigation it was a simple case of the fuel hopper being empty i.e. out of fuel! However, XBee type technology could have  provided an easy solution. Instead of this being an expensive waste of support resources through a pointless service visit or time consuming telephone support calls, a single XBee node (and gateway) could easily have provided all the required information to a simple smartphone application. But back to this project which was more specifically focussed at data logging.

Support for multiple nodes and interfaces

First of all the application that is now very nearly ready is significantly different from the last version. To begin with it has the capability to support multiple nodes with multiple sensor interfaces and sensor types. Also, the data received from the nodes is collated and recorded in a format suitable for analysis and graphing.

Simplicity is the design objective

Overall, the system should be very simple and require minimal use of a display/keyboard for configuration and operation. Eventually it is hoped to migrate the application away from a laptop and onto a Raspberry Pi and make it very portable. For that reason the configuration is performed from a text file which will be read from a USB memory stick. A logging facility has also been included which allows low level debugging.