Hi,

- you do not need a RTOS. Any linux would work fine. If you want a small OS only for your system then I would use DSL or tinycore.

- I would use LAMP for the presentation of the data and use any browser as client(this will save you a lot of problems). To collect the data I would have a demon runnig and feeding the database. The database would become your intercommunication tool. LAMP is not so hard to set up. To do the web pages in PHP is also not to hard but sql might be. To write the demon is a harder job if its done in c for example. Maybe Perl is a easier and better choice.

- You could make the hole system run on windows, mac, linux etc.

- so you need to learn
sql, html, php, c or perl and ofcourse programs like mysql, apache, linux etc.

As suggested maybe its better to pay for the help doing these parts and you can devote your time on marketing, selling etc.

Good luck and we are here to help.


and if you do not like eclipse try netbeans with git or subversion.


and you could make the hole system as a blackbox running a small webserver and the demon under linux. You would connect it the the localnetwork (ethernet) and connect all the watteringunits to the serial port or usb via a converter. Like a router!

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Kalleanka may be correct. Running as a browser only the daemon would have to change for windows, mac and linux. The browser would already be there for the system and apache and MySQL exist for all three platforms. This would be especially true for HTML5. HTML5 works on smartphones and now in automobiles plus it would work for all browsers seamlessly. I guess I could limit parameter changing to the host machine or maybe live dangerously and let the user change parameters anywhere in the world. Java would then only be needed for javascript in the html.

Why would the daemon be easier with perl than with C?

Java is nothing to do with Javascript.

Perl is interpreted, you can write the script once and it'll work where there's a perl interpreter installed, whereas a C program needs to be recompiled for each OS (Windows, Linux, etc) and machine architecture (x86, ARM, etc).

This relates to why people like Java, it's compiled but to a intermediate level where it'll still run anywhere there's a JRE.
Javascript is interpreted, like Perl, so you don't need to worry about if the browser's on a phone (ARM), PC (x86), or other.

To Proud -- Things are look as if I will have two approaches 1) for large systems I will have a PC running linux that will communicate with the RS485 system via a daemon and and two the outside with apache. I am wondering if I can make it an ISP and make it connect directly to the internet. For the other 2) I think the device can exist standalone without a PC. This would be for small applications of only stand alone mist sensors. If the user wants to change parameters in the mist sensor he can buy a small linux PC from me to do so. It would not be cheap but not very expensive either. I would not use the users PC running windows or mac to do the connection. They would have to buy the linux pc from me. Alvin...

Can I have a java daemon (or service on windows)) that runs all the time on its own with no user (main?) programs running like you could with C?

AFAIK you can have a Java program/service running without a GUI or specific desktop user logged in, yes. It would still be technically run under a specific user account, but that's like any service and just how OSs work unless you move the process into the kernel.

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How would one launch something like a java daemon?

The same way you'd launch any other service or daemon? Using the OS's startup scripts. For Linux I believe that's the init or systemd mechanism. Windows has the Service Control Manager. There seem to be a variety of wrappers available, such as http://commons.apache.org/daemon/jsvc.html

A daemon is a process which has detached itself from its initial controlling terminal. I'm not sure if/how that can be accomplished in Java. It isn't strictly necessary to daemonize all services, and depending on the application, it might be undesirable if, for instance, there is an interactive component to it. There is a fairly well defined structure for starting, stopping, querying, and restarting services in Linux. Sometimes, it is as simple as adding a line or two to /etc/rc.local


--- rod.

Supposedly Python is interpreted on Linux, Windows and the Mac. Would that be an alternative to Java to be cross platform and could I do a daemon with Python? Thanks. Alvin....

You can use the python-daemon 1.5.5 to daemonize Python programs. Yes, Python would be a cross platform alternative to Java, in my opinion. If it was my project, I think I would probably chose it over Java for non-GUI applications. Possibly even for GUI applications.

--- rod.

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I am using the Python book "Python Programming and GUIs for Electronic Engineers" ( http://www.elektor.com/products/book....1320886.lynkx ) which is great for me - Also goes over apache, html needed and server side Python code. Thanks for you input on what you would do if you were building the project. Alvin...

I have a question for aspire1 or any one else.

Even though its not directly related to this thread...


My home automation project to involves Micro Controllers talking over RS485 and tied to an Ubuntu Server.
Ive developed a Java GUI with the Swing library and is deployed as a Java Application - not an applet.
My problem, How can I remotely access the Java application which is running on the server since the GUI is not a web-app/html?


As described below?

If I need to start a new thread please let me know.
thanks for any help in advance!

I have not gotten that far yet. But PHP would probably be the way to go.