Re:First things first / Graphical protocol builder

From: Moritz von Buttlar (info_at_baltic-microsolutions.de)
Date: 2002-01-24 04:11:34


At 11:53 23.01.2002 -0500, you wrote:
>A message to the over enthusiastic software group.
>
>FIRST THINGS FIRST.

Hi Jim !

I don't think there has to be a certain order in our progress.
It's possible to write software with a simulator and without a completed
hardware design.
Writing the little interface code to transfer the data from the eeg to the
program is one of the simplest parts.

Now something else:
Do you know LabView ? It's a graphical programming language used for
laboratory/factory automation.
It's very easy to create a control system if you have a flowchart inside
your head. You just
kind of draw the flowchart with the labview software and then it works.
There's a video about this here:
http://digital.ni.com/demo.nsf/websearch/8B0D55401472DDDE86256AB90077DB80?OpenDocument&node=1381_US

We could program a similar editor to create training protocols. It would
consist
of the following function blocks (just as an example):

1. EEG device
2. FFT building block
3. Threshold building block
4. Delay building block
5. Digital Filters
6. Averaging building block
7......what u want

You can place these buildingblocks on the screen using the mouse. Then you
connect them in the order you wish. Every buildingblock
has inputs and outputs. These inputs and outputs each have a special number
format (array of real, real number, integer number for example).
All outputs of one data-type can be connected to an input of the same data
type.
Most times we deal with real numbers (time series). This is the case for
ECG,EMG,EEG,Temperature, almost all biofeedback applications.
Some buildingblocks have several inputs. We can add new signal processing
buildingblocks by programming them. The useres can
combine these blocks as they want.

I think this would be an incredible powerfull and intuitive system. It
should be a little bit similar to LabView, only much less
sophisticated and complicated. Unfotrunately, LabView is a very expensive
software. Otherwise we could write the whole
software in LabView,,,

Maybe this Protocol Editor could be written using Java. That way it would
be platform independent.

Moritz

---------------------------------------------------
Moritz von Buttlar
Flash uC/DSP Development http://www.baltic-microsolutions.de
Free EEG Design http://openeeg.sf.net



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