I'm big on low tech boat with high tech toys.
Essential systems should be simple and field repairable.
Any non-essential system should have at least some fun factor to it.
Gives you something to tinker with in the anchorage at 3am.
Thanks for all the info on smd soldering.
I have done bits and pieces but never any homebrew SMD
large scale (in the commercial labs it was easy, we sent out for printed boards and machine stuffed them for everything).
All my home stuff has been thru hole and often point to
point till i worked out the kinks and printed a board.
The adapter boards are great but they seem to ask a premium for them.
I worked with a friend helping a bit with his homemade 3 axis CNC mill.
I have sent him eagle files and copper boards.
Lay the circuit out as isolates rather than traces and he uses a cutting
head to make circuit boards in front of your eyes. Way
cheap but
a bit large for the boat. I send him designs and he mails me boards.
great for prototyping.
Since we have some programmers checking in now, I am looking for some guidance.
One of the hw/sw projects i am trying to start is a set of gateways
between NEMA2000/NEMA183 commercial sensors and handheld devices.
Apple and android devices are so cheap now, i want to put them at the
helm as instruments (like the
raymarine crap i have now). The gateways
would burp out UDP packets with the data from the NEMA buses onto
wifi.
I want CONTROL as well as reporting. For instance, i want to run my
anchor windlass from my itouch over the
wifi. (another cool gateway to build, and yes it needs bigtime
security with active control).
So here is my initial debate which will play a big role in the architecture.
1. Do i write native apps for the handheld platforms and let them pick off the data they want based on screens,
OR
2. Do i use a embedded server and place all the intelligence there so the handheld devices are just javascript enabled browsers.
I love distributed architectures for their fault tolerance and speed, but
at the rate the platforms change it seems i will be rewriting code constantly with each new release and new platform.
A browser based solution will be simple to write and will
work on any enabled platform. But now there is that central server forking up pages and
the associated bottlenecks as well as the single point of failure.
Lots of advantages though, including the fact it is portable enough to be tunneled over the
internet so i have boat control and monitoring remotely as well.
So, any opinions? I am leaning toward the page server because i don't want to spend my life supporting this and the R&D will be so much quicker.
However, most ajax type apps look kind of clunky on the net and don't
seem very responsive. I am trying to imagine a
wind indicator jerking about or a windlass that waits seconds to shut down.
The last web apps i wrote in an embedded
environment were 8 years ago and had much the same issues. Of course it was in VZ and my server was a 386.
I would love some guidance to avoid wasting a bunch of time.
(I had chosen airplay and the native method as it abstracts the
underlying hardware so write once deploy multiple but then after, 3 months
work, they decided to go from free to $400/copy so here i am addressing the question again).
thanks
gello