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So, you have some equipment for monitoring temparature sensors and
logging their readings. And you supply some software that downloads this
data and lets you organise and examine it on a desktop PC.
Your hardware and software are designed to talk to each other via a
serial cable connecting the hardware to the PC running the software.
Ah, but some people want to actually, you know, have the PC in a
different room to where the hardware is. And they'd like to not have to
dedicate one entire PC to each logger. The answer is simple: your
product needs to communicate over the network!
Now, you *could* redesign your hardware so it has an Ethernet port, and
redesign your software so it understands TCP/IP. But you're not going to.
Instead, what you do is supply your customers with a little black box.
This little black box has a serial connector at one end, and an Ethernet
connection at the other, and it *tunnels* serial traffic over IP.
You also supply your customers with a blob of software which, when
installed on a PC, somehow tricks the PC into thinking it has a new
serial port. All data sent to this port is *actually* tunnelled to the
little black box.
So, between the little black box at one end, and the custom software
driver at the other end, the hardware and software geniunely believe
they're still locally connected, yet actually they can be on different
continents.
Is this a valid solution to a design problem? Or is it a cheap hack?
[Did I mention that the "software" in question appears to be designed to
work with Windows 3.0? Does that change the answer?]
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Invisible wrote:
> Is this a valid solution to a design problem? Or is it a cheap hack?
It's a floor wax *and* a salad dressing!
Seriously, that's not at all uncommon in the world of credit card
terminals. You would rather buy 20 $25 serial boxes than replace 20 $300
credit card terminals when you go to a networked cash register thingie.
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
"That's pretty. Where's that?"
"It's the Age of Channelwood."
"We should go there on vacation some time."
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On Wed, 14 May 2008 16:13:30 +0100, Invisible wrote:
> Is this a valid solution to a design problem?
Yes. I see this occasionally with KVM switches (Avocent does this, for
example) as a way of "extending" a connection.
Jim
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>> Is this a valid solution to a design problem?
>
> Yes. I see this occasionally with KVM switches (Avocent does this, for
> example) as a way of "extending" a connection.
Heh. A KVM switch would be a *horrible* solution for this particular
problem. I mean, tunneling arbitrary serial data over IP isn't great.
But then, I guess serial is pretty speed limited anyway, so it shouldn't
use too much network bandwidth...
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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> It's a floor wax *and* a salad dressing!
Well... I hate salad anyway, so... ;-)
> Seriously, that's not at all uncommon in the world of credit card
> terminals. You would rather buy 20 $25 serial boxes than replace 20 $300
> credit card terminals when you go to a networked cash register thingie.
Subtle nit-pick, but... We're buying a brand new system, not augmenting
an existing one. If we were augmenting an existing one, then yeah, I can
see how just fitting a little extra hardware is clearly the
cost-effective option. I'm not sure how that works when you're buying
something completely brand-new, and it's already partially kludged so
the manufacturers don't have to redesign it... What's your opinion?
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> the manufacturers don't have to redesign it... What's your opinion?
My opinion is that if it only works on Win 3, it's because it's
accessing the serial hardware directly, so it's already a kludge even
before the little black box. :-)
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
"That's pretty. Where's that?"
"It's the Age of Channelwood."
"We should go there on vacation some time."
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Darren New wrote:
> My opinion is that if it only works on Win 3, it's because it's
> accessing the serial hardware directly, so it's already a kludge even
> before the little black box. :-)
Oh no, it *looks* like something from Win 3. It actually *works* on NT4
[and possibly newer, I haven't tried]. ;-)
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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On Wed, 14 May 2008 19:56:55 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>>> Is this a valid solution to a design problem?
>>
>> Yes. I see this occasionally with KVM switches (Avocent does this, for
>> example) as a way of "extending" a connection.
>
> Heh. A KVM switch would be a *horrible* solution for this particular
> problem. I mean, tunneling arbitrary serial data over IP isn't great.
> But then, I guess serial is pretty speed limited anyway, so it shouldn't
> use too much network bandwidth...
Well, I wasn't saying a KVM would be a solution (I don't even know the
circumstances really), just that I've seen Avocent/Cybex switches that
use serial-to-ethernet adapters in order to extend the range. Range
extenders have been around for quite a while, though - both for serial
and parallel devices (can't remember the name of the company that did the
parallel extenders I used years ago).
Jim
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Just get a temperature logger with a USB interface and a decent API, connect
it to a cheap old PC, which is running some software *you* wrote to read out
the data and send it over LAN to some server in some useful format.
That's what I do here :-)
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scott wrote:
> Just get a temperature logger with a USB interface and a decent API,
> connect it to a cheap old PC, which is running some software *you* wrote
> to read out the data and send it over LAN to some server in some useful
> format.
>
> That's what I do here :-)
Well, this is for mission-critical stuff, so we have a service contract
and all that kind of thing, so we basically get the hardware and
software they provide. But yeah, if support wasn't an issue, that's
probably what I'd do...
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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