This week we worked on the technology review assignment. The assignment consisted of explaining the parts of the project I am assigned to, and research technologies to accomplish those parts. The parts of the project I am assigned to are lab computer-specific tasks that consist of the lab computer Python script, the lab computer commands to instrumentation, and the lab computer communication layer. Firstly the lab computer script technology is going to use Python as the National Instruments library is in Python and it is generally easier to code things that only require a small codebase to work as needed. The next technology pertains to the lab computer commands. This uses the National Instruments LabVIEW to facilitate communication with the filling valve at the Hinsdale Wave Laboratory. There is no other technology to use as it is proprietary. With that being said, I have used National Instruments libraries before to communicate with instrumentation so I feel like it would be a smooth implementation that I foresee no problems with. The last technology I mentioned is using sockets to communicate with the clients. Our architecture consists of a mobile application client that will communicate with a server to then relay that information to the lab computer that is connected to the filling valve and pressure gauge. Messages will be sent back and forth from each client, and sockets are our first choice for the communication layer. I chose this because there is a lot of documentation and it is the fastest possible communication method available. There is still research being done on other methods like MQTT, which doesn’t share the same performance, but for our application, it may not be needed. This week has gone smoothly, and I am excited to start implementation for our project. It will definitely improve the efficiency and experience of lab researchers at the wave lab and hopefully, improve learning and research.
