collaboration needed any one interested?

[thexman]

hi guys im looking to use the RPI device as a Control Hub utilizing Web pages and the fact it has a HDMI port built in and linux as its operatiing system, i need some one who can produce PHP / JAVA / Web content to drive my Control cards and do mathmatical work in the background of the web pages, so the end user only sees the outputs and the inputs its going to need quite a bit of coding i have all the device APi points and coding just need that special person who in the first instance (demonstation box) can get it up and running, and later (retail Product) work directly with my self and share the benifits.

eventualy this project will be a marketable device and revolutionise an industry with its low costs and ease of programming

Benifits -  as the school kids can program these and will have seen them in there schools the future work force will be generated by education level.

linux open protocol and peoples wealth of information.

[nick.mccloud]

Many of us here could be that special person in your life, tell us more!

[thexman]

with out telling my entire project im going to be using RPi to control a large number of USB input / output devices Via Web pages how ever my personnal Programming is limit ive been spoilt and spent the last 20 years Programming Control systems threw the system software supplied with the controllers this means although i can control anything using both analog or digital signals and functions writing these functions into web pages and using tags and lables not so simple what im after is some one able to convert whats in my head and design into working webpages and scripts, thatcan be clumped together to produce working control statagies, IE read a temperature and create an output based on the control function. IE alarm if temperature is high using relay module 1 relay 1 etc. sounds simple it is or should be just need some coded web pages the system will be running on debian and iceweasle, web, there shouldnt be to many limits only the size of the files i assume let me know if your the person or persons i should be talking to and lets get developing this i need a working demo in the next three months to be able to retail ./ market a working project and advance into sales and approval from Consultances to get the uk market interested then onto development and Partners to sell the items .

[SN]

You might as well come clean as you"re waaaaaay behind ninjablocks.com sorry!

[thexman]

post a link then as i spent several hours looking and couldnt see any other project like mine.

[thexman]

ahh ive been and looked at ninjablocks im beyond them so there i already have all my USB input cards and Output cards Produced there a quarter if not smaller than the ninja cards there all currently manufactored and tested and proven i do like to be upto date i have weather station with temperature humididty and air pressure all data logable

relay and multi relay outputs light sensors digital inputs analog inputs from Pots. etc so maybe im ahead of ninjaBlocks.com and they should come and look at how its done. when my website goes live. ?:)

[SN]

Show us your wares and I might be more positive. ninjablocks have a very polished BUT expensive product. So if you can undercut them price-wise that would give you an angle too. As would some use of capitalisation and punctuation, assuming you are trying to get a business going here. . .

[thexman]

Getting a buisness going and being in buisness are two differant things how ever

1, i agree punctuation is poor

2, simply flaming a post because it says i have one post isnt nice try to be helpfull not confrontational

anyways i Pm'ed you a link please feel free to go look at the product, some of its shown there and it is cheaper than ninjablocks but like most things it needs refinning, and software is where i need help so if your interested please let me know.

[thexman]

http://www.yoctopuce.com

have a look at the product im going to be controlling from my RPi post comments

[SN]

Wasn"t flaming, just actually trying help (badly it would appear) HOWEVER having seen your website and wares you seem to have a good product set. I"ll let you post up the URL as I think you should and you will get support I believe.

[john_wage]

I went over and looked at that site "ninjablocks"

I'm not normally a paranoid guy but hell, I would never buy a device that can upload live feed images and other various information about my home to a 3rd party server..

Privacy.. extinct since early 2000's

[thexman]

hi john_wage fortunatly were going to be using "Yoctopuce modules" and we wont be uploading anywhere but the RPi SD card for storage of datalogs and Program configuration, should a power failure occure reboot should hopefully be set to automatic upon power restore, and the programming will continue from its last position all to be finialised once a programmer for PHP/JAVA/HTML is found

still looking please post comments on here thanks

[rurwin]

I would be concerned about using those yoctopuce modules in an industrial setting. Nowhere on that site does it give any indication of analogue filtering or isolation, nor indication of the sampling rate, and they have very few channels. In an industrial control situation you can easily have a requirement for 50 or 100 inputs and maybe 12 or 25 outputs. At £25 for five inputs or one output, the price is going to rise rather high, especially if you need bespoke filtering and isolation on each one. There is also no input module for thermocouple inputs, so you would need to buy in converters for those. They don't have any analogue output modules.

I would have nightmares about using any of the supported languages for industrial control, with the possible exception of very carefully crafted C++. Their selection of languages alone leads me to think that they have given scant concern to sampling rates, jitter and latency in their libraries.

If your product is going to offer real-time performance at 1Hz rates for up to a dozen channels, then those modules should be fine, but I would not trust them to handle several dozens of channels at 10Hz. For anything faster than that, even Linux is a risk.

[nick.mccloud]

thexman said:


http://www.yoctopuce.com


Are these your products?

Do you have a business plan and a functional spec?

How will your business cope with short supply of the RPi?

Can you use other small board computers to do this if there is short supply of the RPi?

But most importantly, have you got drivers for the USB connection working on Linux?

[bobc]

I must admit I don't really know what the target market is for these type of products.

Having said that, my experience with USB in real industrial environments is that it is too unreliable. Industrial users creating bespoke systems need something robust and reliable, e.g. DIN rail modules.

Home users or hobbyists are sensitive to cost, so for example controlling something like a 3D printer would take 100's of Euros of modules, not cost effective nor compact solution. Buying a USB temperature module for 30x the cost of a thermistor looks crazy, to me.

That kinda leaves "toy" users, i.e. people who want to play with fun gadgets without a real background in software or hardware. They are willing to pay over the odds for a easy to use plug-and-play type system. For that, easy to use software is a key. That is a big chunk of work, if not more work than the hardware, not something that is a quick add on later. So it seems surprising to me that there is not already a software solution in place for these modules.

If the modules are being controlled by a dedicated Ras-Pi with a web interface, I'm not sure they benefit from being USB. If they idea is you can take the module and plug it in any old PC, then I am not sure where the web interface and Ras-Pi come in.

However, I do like the "Vaporware" section on the web site, if only more web sites were that honest!

[thexman]

non of this is relevant as its not for industrial use.

PLC's are not my target market as there’s nothing out there better than the original PLC

how ever things like a Fan Coil Unit for An office current UK market a controller is around £100 pounds to buy needs wiring and has no front end / display capabilities

Use a Pi and Usb IO I can produce the same control for less then £80 now times that by the last job I did which had 320 units its quite a saving plus the PI system has lots of advantages not only the fact that one controller could control 10 FCU's for example

non of these need fast control as most people are unable to tell the difference between 20.5 Deg C and 21.0 Deg C the sample rate on the yoctopuce I believe is once every second and this is more than adequate for building management purposes,

[thexman]

rurwin

im not a PLC engineer im a BeMS engineer most of the systems ive designed and commissioned had over 400 points i would agree the product isnt for real time control but in Building control real time is only used for things like metering or Pulse counting and most modern meters are now modbus and theres Linux Drivers for modbus. or RS485 so im not worried about adding these later to my project the real cost for adding a thermistor type sensor to all teh major UK systems Varies but the cheapest is £3 for the sensor how ever the input cost to the controller is massive.

Trend Controls base units start at £400+ for a 8 universal input controller +engineering +commissioning +panel build.

Priva Controls base units again £400+ licence for single input is £12pounds +engineering +commission + panel

Siemens Controls Base unit is £550 + software + commissioning

Raspberry Pi £28 usb sensor £19 = £47 pounds + software + commission + enclosure

now you see where the sence is .

[hippy]

bobc said:

If the modules are being controlled by a dedicated Ras-Pi with a web interface, I'm not sure they benefit from being USB. If they idea is you can take the module and plug it in any old PC, then I am not sure where the web interface and Ras-Pi come in.
In many ways that's similar to the argument that anyone can run already Linux on their PC so there's little point in the R-Pi. One has to look at the whole to see how a system based around an R-Pi can offer more.

These products look to be very similar to Microsoft Gadgeteer and other plug together systems, but using USB rather than a proprietary connection scheme. That's a more open connection scheme, gets the hardware side sorted out, and just leaves the software side; dedicated applications to what 'thexman' seems to envisage.

The yoctopuce hardware coupled with an R-Pi does give an opportunity to compete with Microsoft Gadgeteer and others as some suggested it perhaps should, but how best to do that I don't have any particular views on.

The yoctopuce hardware is quite expensive, but that's usually the case with plug together systems, so it's a reasonable enough product to me and would seem to have a potential market of which an R-Pi could be part of.

[hippy]

thexman said:

how ever things like a Fan Coil Unit for An office current UK market a controller is around £100 pounds to buy needs wiring and has no front end / display capabilities
Use a Pi and Usb IO I can produce the same control for less then £80


You'll likely now have a flood of replies pointing out you could shave the cost to a tenth of that using a sub-$1 microcontroller, and it's a fair point.

[thexman]

True Hippy but the fact still remains that the $1 doller controller cannot be changed quickly where as the RPi and USB we can rewrite the software to do what ever we want easly and quickly and with housings for the RPi and Usb devices they could be installed with ease too the $1 doller control i dout it has a housing nor will it be suitable for anyone but an engineer and a soldering iron to install.

[thexman]

nmcc said:


How will your business cope with short supply of the RPi?

Can you use other small board computers to do this if there is short supply of the RPi?

But most importantly, have you got drivers for the USB connection working on Linux?

the Rpi shortage should be short lived i would expect RPi to have reasonable stock by Q4 of this year giving me enough time to have produced software to do the rest of the control with

any small board PC would work but costs are the only issue the nearest i could find inplace of an Rpi would be £130 thats £100 pounds more than a Pi so its possable but not cost effective

USB devices needs no Perpose built driver they are HiD devices and work under linux already

my ultimate goal would be to produce software on the RPi device in Python that way the school leavers who used the Rpi's in classrooms would already know how to program one of these and that would be a future proof workforce.  as training anyone to program these is going to be difficult in the first few months years.

im already finding it hard to find anyone to produce some demonstation software as this Forum and posts have faild so far to attract anyones interest in programming  there only interest is in pointing out the short comings of the hardware or faults with my typing or both

i remain committed to using Rpi as the base controller and Yoctopuce as my prefured supplier of USB IO in the comming months you will see the advanced modules there currently engineering for me more advanced than there current range with better Functionality for the real world.

[nick.mccloud]

You are asking people to provide expertise & time to you but without any indication that they will be appropriately reimbursed.

Typing may not be something that comes naturally to you but the presentation of your request speaks to the credibility of your project - developers will be less inclined to engage if they aren't confident in you and bare in mind that programmers have to get their typing right for the code to work - you have a huge clash of cultures going on here.

In addition, with the small amount of information you provided, no one could really tell what it was you wanted to achieve and many of us made assumptions about industrial control systems, for which RPi & USB are not well suited.

If you want to catch the eye of some good programmers, you'll need to provide quite a lot more information. I gather that you are looking at creating a building management system:

Do you have a functional specification of what it needs to do?

Do you have funds to pay the programmer or are you offering shared equity in the project?

Do you have timescales?

Do you have prospective customers?

Do you have some test sites?

[thexman]

hi nmcc

90% of all uk BMS systems are Spcified by the consultant running the Project for the Customer it seams to have been like this for the last 20 years ive been working in it

To get a new Product specified by a consultant is Very hard work and is normally led by the customer requesting a specific system to be used this in turn is normally pushed by the maker onto the customer with discounts etc once Proven the constultants tend to quote the system to other clients as a Via alternative to the normal suspects

i dont currently have a designated customer i have lots of contacts and possabilities but with out a working demo unit its much harder to prove a point of operation / control

i currently employ serveral staff however non of them are able to produce standalone software so i would have to buy in that person under contract unless they shared an interest in developement for the long run and final inclusion in any business or product that is developed (possabilities are endless)

Time scale i would like to see a demo system thats portable to customers by Q3 of 2012 and be in full production of software and hardware modules by Q3 2013

Current BMS systems like Trend , Priva , cylon, siemens, and others operate a partner or systems house setup. i would like to market my product in a simular way

[thexman]

I appreciate the various comments, and i am going away to gather more information and develop my plan in more detail, but i will be back

thanks for the input no further comments required at this time my receptionist is going to love me when she reads this and how bad my typing spelling grammer have been looks like no biscuits for me with my tea.

ill post back when i have a more perminant position for a developer for the software

[wright]

you are asking for collaboration?

collaboration goes both ways

only thing you have given is a loose howto do what you want to be done

what you need is a allmighty robot that when giving a idea

gives a output of your desire without knowing about things at all