Things are continuing apace. The startup script is written (in bash), and is responsible for mounting the USB, setting system time, running and renicing Core.py, and so on. This necessitated some monkeying around with sudo configurations and fstab, but now works smoothly. A similar graceful-end bash script uses SIGUSR1 (an idea from my 2010 predecessors) to tell Core to stop at its leisure, which right now means at the end of a cycle. These things are tested and work nicely. A particularly handy feature is that startup.sh catches error messages from Core should it fail unexpectedly and sends them on along with a notification that Core has crashed.
Data storage and manipulation is mostly done, pending some tweaking. That function proved to be a great deal of complex error-handling for things that are very unlikely to fail anyway, but I figured due diligence now might prove worthwhile if it saves a batch of data somewhere down the line. Meanwhile, definitions of how to convert raw data have already grown to 1700 lines even though I don’t know how to convert any of the data yet — most of those 1700 lines are generic or placeholders, generated rather quickly with the magic of Sublime Text 2 and to be filled in at a later date.
A daily system health and space check is underway, though I’m still thinking of clean ways to trigger it daily. Unresponsive PIC and received-string format errors are also implemented. I’m thinking about doing away with the toggle approach to clearing 5Minute2Unix currently in use in favor of just letting the mac clear the file whenever it reads, if at all possible.
Still to be done:
- Integrate daily laundry-list into normal running of the program
- Write some sort of documentation
- Add data-processing and response logic
- Add framework for range-checking
- Possibly rework the way formats are stored
- Possibly rework the way Core loops through and processes data
- Create a control panel for Tom
This last could be done two ways: using python and Tkinter, or as a web app using javascript. I’m leaning towards the latter, which seems more user-friendly. The learning (or rather, remembering) curve would be a bit steeper for me, but browser access would be worth it and the refresher would be helpful. More info to come when it exists.
–Soren