Senior Design Predictament

[Joseph T]

Hello all,

I've been using Google Web Designer for my Senior project and have come up with certain hiccups.  In the attached image, I've painted in the brackets and arrow to help guide you to my problems.  

Here's some background:  working on an HMI touchscreen with a Raspberry Pi 2.  Many of the GPIO pins will be used to display information, the only thing is I don't know how to approach this.  Hopefully with this one example I'll be able to implement it on other screens or "pages" as named in Google Web Designer(GWD).

Starting with the upper right brackets, these blue boxes are going to be constantly updating with new information as voltage and current change from a converter.  How do I set up the GPIO pins on the Raspberry Pi 2 to display correct information in Google Web Designer?

Below that are status bubbles that toggle when something is true or not.  How would I change the state of these?  (These are also GPIO pins on the Pi)

And finally, the right-most bracket toggles different GPIOs initializing the start ups or shutdowns of the system.  If I can get help from above I should be able to figure it out, but I want the buttons to have a "pressed" state when a user touches them.  

How should I approach my problems?  Use Javascript in the code?  Any help is much appreciated, even if you know nothing about the Raspberry Pi.  Any help counts!

Thanks!

[Dale Fenton]

Hi Joseph,

I'm not sure that GWD is really the right tool to use for the project you're trying to accomplish here. GWD is really intended as a tool to develop HTML5 web banners. It sounds like you're trying to develop a touch-screen interface running on Raspberry Pi.

You may find that this article will lead you in a better direction:

https://www.baldengineer.com/raspberry-pi-gui-tutorial.html

[Joseph T]

Also...should I make the switch if I have a web server(it contains the whole GWD code on it) running off the pi that's using the GWD html5 code?

The project is much more than just a touchscreen.  The Raspberry Pi has to use a Apache web server, and in addition, use HTML5 code to host the webpage on the server.  I just thought GWD was the best way to do that since I barely understand HTML.  Also with that HTML, it must change based on the GPIO pins in and out from the relay board and the pi.

Thoughts?

[Joseph T]

Hell, I might move to Qt Application Design

[Dale Fenton]

Sorry, it sounded to me initially that you were running the Pi hardwired to a touchscreen and whatever physical hardware your'e interacting with.

If you're running this as a web app dashboard / control panel on Apache then it would be appropriate to use an HTML page built with CSS and Javascript to build the display and interactivity. I still wouldn't recommend using GWD to layout a full webpage that will be displayed in a browser, the application itself should really be called Google Banner Designer or Google Ad Designer as it's really not built / designed to build full websites.

You might look into learning just a tiny bit of HTML / CSS using a framework like Bootstrap ( https://getbootstrap.com/ ) which will help you build a webpage that is responsive and has many of the components you might want to work with to build your UI.

As far as hooking up the data from your GPIO pins to the web interface and passing commands back to the hardware to turn things on and off I found this article that looks like it could provide a good framework / basis to work from:  http://www.cupidcontrols.com/2014/09/direct-raspberry-pi-io-with-apache-and-wiringpi/

[Joseph T]

Thanks a lot Dale...got a lot of work ahead of me now...and my partners won't help at all...

Thank you sir!

[careenj...@gmail.com]

There are a few rules to follow in Capstone Design that will make your whole life a lot easier.

Design is hard.
Design is hard. (Fight Club humor)
Everything takes twice as long as you think. (Unless you’re me and then it takes three times as long.)
If your prototype is not done by the first of April your in a world of “!?@!”. You get the idea. You need a lot of time to test because things you never thought possible will break.
Communication is key. If you and your team are not on the same page constantly you could be doing more work than is necessary. Always stay in contact.
http://www.traininginmarathahalli.in/hadoop-training-in-bangalore