ANN: Open Instrumentation Project

[Peter Hiscocks]

This announces the Open Instrumentation Project (OIP), which has been formed
to support open-source software and low cost hardware for electronic
instrumentation.

The objective is to make electronic instrumentation readily accessible to
students, hobbiests, engineers and scientists. This then allows independent
circuit development and project-based learning in electronics.

Three instruments have been completed:

- dual channel, 20MSample/sec oscilloscope
- 100kHz waveform generator
- low-frequency vector-network analyser

Screen shots and the software for these instruments are available from
sourceforge at:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/oip/

The software is licensed under the GPL.

Low-cost hardware using this software is available from Syscomp Electronic
Design:

http://www.syscompdesign.com/

The software uses the Tcl/Tk language without extensions, which makes it
simple to install and maintain. The current cross-platform implementation
runs under Windows and Linux operating systems. We are currently testing the
Mac OS-X version.

Tcl/Tk is a scripting language that is interpreted text. It is simple for
non-experts to add features to the graphical user interface.

The hardware uses the USB interface with drivers and hardware that emulate a
high-speed serial port, which simplifies programming. No USB programming is
required. The Windows and Mac drivers are available from FTDI at

http://www.ftdichip.com/

Linux drivers are available in the Linux kernel from version 2.4 onward.

Invitation
----------
The current releases of software provide basic features for the instruments,
but there are many that could be added. For example, the oscilloscope would
benefit from 'waveform math' commands. The waveform generator could be
configured as an audio sweep generator. Contributions are welcome and will
be shared with the user community.

--
Peter D. Hiscocks
Professor Emeritus, Ryerson University
-----
Phone: 647-839-0325
Email: phis...@ee.ryerson.ca
Academic URL: http://www.ee.ryerson.ca/~phiscock
Business URL: Syscomp Electronic Design Limited
(USB Oscilloscope and Generator)
http://www.syscompdesign.com

[RickE]

This is very good. I've been interested in this for some time, too.
Tcl/Tk and derivatives are excellent languages. But for low level
hardware control, especially on linux, I've been really happy with
freepascal. You might like to check it out;

http://www.freepascal.org/

There is a primitive Tcl/freepascal interface.

I've been struggling with a raw, linux console, framebuffer user
interface. FreePascal offers some special data structures. Tcl is a
very nice high level language.

[PeterH]

> http://www.freepascal.org/
>
> There is a primitive Tcl/freepascal interface.
>
> I've been struggling with a raw, linux console, framebuffer user
> interface. FreePascal offers some special data structures. Tcl is a
> very nice high level language.

Interesting. Looks like it should run under Windows, Linux and Mac.
Are there commands to configure and access the serial ports?

Peter

[RickE]

PeterH wrote:
> Are there commands to configure and access the serial ports?
>

I only work with the Linux interfaces. Freepascal has a full serial
port interface. In Linux, terminals and serial ports and consoles share
many features.

Object Pascal, as implemented by freepascal, is quite impressive.