I’m writing this week about our seeming lack in progress in our hardware development. While we didn’t get all of the hardware configured as we’d hoped… we did make quite the impressive prototype of what the cap assembly will ultimately be as well as a rough prototype of the holding apparatus (now to find a suitable material to construct it out of).
I took it upon myself to knock out a few feature implementation on the coding side this weekend as to have something to show for the lack of physical progress. I added some robust features to the drink selection process that now allows the user to choose a glass size for a particular beverage (given that that beverage has more than one glass option).
I also created the code that generates the execute strings for both the prime and clean lines functions, as well as put some finishing touches on their corresponding pages. A user can now clean/prime all lines or a chosen selection of lines and the code generates the system calls.
I did this in an easily configurable manner (for when we finally calibrate the system) using an array in PHP to store ounce values for each line and generating the system calls using our existing serial driver (hooray for reuse). What this allows us to do is simply change a value (in two places, primeLines and cleanLines) for each line to increase or decrease the value when calibrating and fine tuning the system. This is a far better alternative than having to recompile a version of our C code each time we make an adjustment.
Currently our biggest issue is the lack of Linux support from the company that makes our touchsceen (Elo Touchsystems). They have linux drivers and tutorials on how to install them… but they are all a bit old… We have even tried switching to an older kernel, (like the one found in Fedora Core 6) but to no avail. We will keep you posted on this development, but by all means if you have a solution for getting an Elo 1545L (more commonly 2500U) USB Touchscreen to work in linux please let us know, either by leaving a comment or emailing me (fernholz -at- gmail -dot- com).