Creating a Arduino Management Tool

Projects Libraries
1

First of all i hope i am in the right category for this topic (if not some nice mod please move this threat).

Good day to you Ladys and Gentlemen,

im new to this community and got here because my wife kindly got me an genuino uno for christmas with a bunch of RFF transmitters and receivers. Since then i did not had enough time to make any use of it until yesterday. As i am a human and by that lazy in nature i looked up for finished tools and stuff in order make the first steps in order to manage this crazy little controller with my pc by using VB.NET. At the end of day i didnt find anything satisfying since most of all snippets were either really low in functionality or had a very horrbile approach on the materia.

As is woke up this morning i did decide to screw the things i did found so far and go for an own approach to create managing tool for my arduino / genuino uno(s more coming soon). Since i thought that some people might end up like me with searching for some kind of more satisfying solution, i decided to put this up and see if there is enough interest for my project to make a detailed blog of it and share it as im building it up from scratch.

As the term "Management Tool" isnt giving some kind of huge idea what it acutally will be in the end, i will give you the requirement i have for this tool and what kind of solutions it will have implemented.

Requirement and features planned:

  • Windows compatibility (since im using a htpc with Windows7 as home server)
  • Compatibility with windows .NET 4.5 (since im writing it in VB.NET)
  • A GUI to interact with the tool directly
  • A TCP/IP remote access to control it from inside and/or outside my LAN
  • PNP for the connected devices
  • A proprietary script template for softcoded events (timers etc.)
  • Support for multiple devices at the same time
  • A failsafe multithreading design

And in case this tool will actually used by others i will go for a structured modular design on order to exchange classes between users to implement them very easily in the tool. Since the project is rather extensive i plan to do this stepwise in the next 12 months with some of the steps beeing bigger and some lesser ones (as my time allows me to). So this is no 1-2-3 go project.

So if there is some kind of interest for this project in order to participate in it by learning from it or using the tool please let me know. If there is not its still cool for me since i can spare all the documentating :smiley: If there actually is interest i will try to keep the progress as easy to understand as possible as long as it does not lead to very crappy design. Basic knwoledge about datatypes, conditions and functionality is required. Knowledge of oop will help.

Best Regards,
b00n

P.S. please excuse the fact im lacking in english skills.

2

Well it sounds interesting but I'm not sure I understand where it fits into the Arduino life cycle.
Is it a development framework where you develop application code for an Arduino target system or have I misunderstood that ?
If you have now got an Arduino with some peripheral devices, I'd start trying to find what libraries already exist to support those devices and use the existing development environment(s) to program an application. Once you've done that, you'll see where the weak spots are in the existing platform and can think about solutions to address those.
Your English is fine.

3

The Management tool will not be used in order to develop code for the arduino. It will be the base of a smarthome server that can communicate bidirectional with all devices connected to the pc. For example if you connect a device with a rff receiver it will receive the data form the device and store it to you computer after processing it in order to built up a simple database of rff signals to be accessed by the tool. Als it will be able to make use of any other device connected like rff transmitters or IR receivers / transmitters and so on. The proprietary script template will allow you to create time schedules for certain events like "switch on plug socket x via rff y at z:zz o'clock", "if the temperature by device x hits y send signal z by device d" or simply said "if input I is comping from device D send output O to device E". The template will be used to edit those events easily without having them hardcoded in the tool or the controllers. So basicly it will be a framework yes.

So basicly the tool is used to manage all devices by beeing a platform for intercommunication and a basic tool with simple and easy ability to extend.

4

OK. I see it now. An Arduino based home automation platform.
You can see the sort of features that existing systems offer here (not necessarily Arduino based) if you have not already done so, to proritise your development: Google