[Embedlets-dev] A use scenario and I/O device tagging

[Ted K. <tk...@ya...>]

Here is the use scenario I would like to eventually achieve for the assembly of
the controller for the CNC Plasma Cutter that I am building:


1) Turn on a PC and launch the Graphic Wiring Tool.

2) Instantiate a new Embedlet Container.

3) Drag a CNCController Embedlet from the Embedlet Pallet and drop it into the
container.  The CNCControllerEmbedlet has been pre-designed to use a
JAPLServoController interface to talk to the servo I/O device that it will be
controlling.

4) Plug a JSIMM backplane into a serial port on the PC (The SLIP/UART scheme
really shines here!).

5) Plug a muvium-based 3 Axis industrial servo/stepper controller JSIMM card
into the JSIMM backplane and the JAPLServoController interface that represents
this servo card should *automatically* appear inside of the wiring tool.  The
only way that I can see this happening is if the servo card were tagged with
information that described what it is.

(Systronix has been working on tag-enabling their products and I think that we
will need to figure out a way to come up with a universal device tagging scheme
which can be used to associate any I/O hardware with the JAPL interface that
represents it).

6) Drag the JAPLServoController component (that 'magically' appeared) onto the
CNCControllerEmbedlet component in order to bind them.

7)  Configure the CNCControllerEmbedlet by right-clicking on it and giving it
information like the size and resolution of the X, Y and Z axis, maximum axis
traverse rate, etc.

8)  Power up the servo drives in order to test and adjust the system's
configuration on a *live* system.

9)  After everything is working as desired, have the wiring tool package the
application and then deploy it to a TStik.

10)  Disconnect the JSIMM backplane from the PC and then plug the TStik into
the backplane.  When the TStik powers up, its Embedlet based application should
automatically re-bind the JAPL interfaces it contains with the physical I/O
devices that are plugged into the backplane.


So far there does not appear to be any fundamental reason why a use-scenario
like this cannot be realized and we seem to be doing a fairly good job of
coming up with the step-by-step subsolutions needed to solve the overall
problem.

Ted

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