PalmOS GUI for the eelab

Completed Spring 2001 in partial requirements for the degree in Electrical Engineering from Ryerson Polytechnic University.

Abstract

To provide Electrical Engineering students with affordable lab instrumentation, faculty at Ryerson Polytechnic University developed the eelab. The hardware is constructed from a kit supplying the necessary circuit boards and components. All instrument controls and displays are facilitated through PC software via a serial connection.

The use of standard serial communications and an ASCII text messaging scheme between the hardware and controlling computer opens up the possibility for control by other devices equipped with serial interfaces. Toward this end, a hand-held Palm computer was adopted for this purpose. In addition to its serial capability, the Palm was appropriate for the project because of its event-driven software model, being particularly suited for user interfaces.

A functional GUI was developed to control the Power Supply and Function Generator devices of the eelab. Development was undertaken using PRC-Tools, a comprehensive development environment available under the GNU General Public License.

Fundamental control of the Power Supply and Function Generator was achieved through the use of standard user interface elements such as buttons and sliders, and the hand-held device was successfully interfaced to the eelab with the aid of loop-back connector.

Progress Log

01.04.23
Tested Function Generator GUI w/ eelab hardware, and with some minor adjustments, success! The first version of the Palm OS eelab GUI is now complete!

01.04.16
Final report complete: here it is.

01.04.08
Completed Function Generator code; ready for final testing wih eelab hardware.

01.02.15
Tested the Power Supply w/ the eelab hardware: after some final debugging, success!

01.02.11
Completed Power Supply code . . . now onto debugging and testing.

01.01.21
Successfully compiled skeleton Power Supply code.

01.01.19
Completed Power Supply pseudo-code.

01.01.11
Designed Function Generator form.

01.01.06
Coded Power Supply form.

00.12.15
Here's my final report for the semester. As mentioned in the previous entry, I'm using GCC for this project, and have downloaded the necessary tools from Palm.com.

00.12.03
Designed Power Supply form.

00.11.17
To avoid costly commercial solutions, and the possible limitations of shareware, I've decided to tackle the project "brute force" with C and the gnu collection of tools for Palm development. I'm currently in the process of collecting these tools and resources, and will post my roster here once everything is in order.

00.10.06
My topic has been submitted and approved. Here it is!

00.09.30
The electrical department has actually renamed the thesis as a 'fourth year design project,' but for all intents and purposes, I still like to refer to it as my thesis. I'm planning to work w/ Peter Hiscocks, developing a PalmOS GUI for his eelab.

FIN