Hi Mathieu,

I proposed Excel just for the fact I've got experience on that and not much time to help
However if iteroperability/open source is a requirement, then I'm not able to start from scratch with an Open Source Framework and develop something barely usable in reasonable time.

If any other volountear know and wish to lead the developepment with an Open Source Framework I maybe help him/her in small task that do not require such a long time to be comfortable with the framework.

Just let me know how you wiah to proceede and I will help in the few spare time I'v got.



Ric

If you can find some way of getting Excel to export a graph every so often to a directory - that would mean it could be posted to the web and will get round these open source issues (of course having an open source tool as well would be good if there is someone to do that). Here is how it could work.

1 Your tool is uploaded to a machine anywhere in the world and left running.
2 Periodically it downloads the latest CSVs, creates graphs, saving them to a folder on the website
3 People view results via a browser of their choice, on phone or otherwise as a simple png, svg or jpg.

If only possible to save graph to local directory automatically, then something like superflexiblefilesynchroniser could be used to do the upload steps including archiving older graphs.

The samples will be taken say every 10s - I would suggest therefore that the tool automatically generates a beautiful excel chart every minute for each replication location. This could be combined on a page with a webcam view of the experiment taken on the same timeframe. Historical data, charts and webcam snaps will be archived, this will allow animated synched videos to be produced compressing say 2 weeks experiment into a short video at 30FPS. This would be very compelling.

This would get round any open source issues and anyone that wants to verify the process can download a version of the sheet minus upload code and see the under lying code, download data, run graph generation and see that it produces the same results.

Would also be nice to have a too / from time slider in the download version so that users could download whole dataset and then choose the time slice to generate a graph for.

B

Hi Bob,

putting an Excel on server side as back engine I think will generate some problems of licensing.

If the scenario is to have a scheduler that every X second

1) Download the latest csv from a web site or file folder
2) Generare charts based on file values as png and store in an outut folder
3) The folder is accessible via web so that anyone can see the picture

Then I can see how much time it will take to dev....

And we can get rid of excel (using free char options available by Microsoft .net framework)

Hoping that using the .net framework is not a problem (that is assuming that this pieces of codes runs on Windows machine).



Ric

I think it is still valuable to have you user side Excel solution. But if you can do this - it would be fantastic.

B

Our server software is running PHP on a freebsd server at the moment. The front end software is mostly javascript. I have plans to make the user interface much nicer, but my software guy is busy making the instrumentation log accurately first. Anybody know a good javascript programmer that would be inspired to help save the world?

Ok Bob,

I will try to work on both sides.

As a priority I will start working on the automatic graph generator, then on the Excel tool.

Please be patient with me. I will do my best

Ric

Ric,

There is no Panic, contribute at the pace you can - all anyone can be asked to do is their best. We really appreciate your effort.

This is a learning process for all of us and all help is gratefully received. For instance, In the quest for the most elegant reactor design, there will be blind alleys that are not ultimately pursued but that we learn from. This is true for all really interesting tasks.

Bob

Hi Bob,

Unfortunately next week I wll be abroad for work, but at the end of the next coming week I will be able to send you a prototype of graph generator. From there you could decide if it is helpful and decide how and if you can move on.

It's a real pleasure for me helping this wonderful project.

Ric

Thanks so much again

Bob

This is Robert Lindsay - I agree that using LIbreOffice or OpenOffice for spreadsheets is preferable to MicroSoft. Open source software demonstrates a transparency, follows the philosophy of crowd sourcing, and is freely accessible. If custom programming becomes required I can program in SCALA, C++, C on a variety of platforms however I would keep everything OpenSource.