kev_bite Posted January 4, 2009 Author Share Posted January 4, 2009 That's just one idea. In my Software Engineering degree, I did a very specialised bit of work, which probably won't be used by anyone anywhere apart from for the specific purpose it was designed (helping us update Flash movies remotely).I did a lot of specialised work within my placement (30 odd application) as everything that I created there was just to solve one specific requirement. I want to do something that will benefit many people. Btw I guess you work in the hubs at Hallam uni.... probably seen you around once or twice ;) Kev Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dbuckley Posted January 4, 2009 Share Posted January 4, 2009 All my lectures say that its cheaper to buy more hardware than pay a software engineer to do the same task but create the software that it performs faster. This is true in most businesses they just push it on to higher end hardware. If you are building one or two of something, that is true. If you are building a lot of somethings then the astounding discovery is that software is free and hardware costs money. Fixing hardware on units shipped and out with customers is much more expensive that shipping a software update. Moore's law has continued to impact on this. Audio mixing is a good case in point; all the hardware based digital mixers available today use DSPs. But a small number of campanies are now producing software that does everything you would expect of a modern digital mixer on a PC... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dmills Posted January 4, 2009 Share Posted January 4, 2009 Moore's law has continued to impact on this. Audio mixing is a good case in point; all the hardware based digital mixers available today use DSPs. But a small number of campanies are now producing software that does everything you would expect of a modern digital mixer on a PC... Actually a biggish matrix mixer with eq, delays and compressors on the crosspoints (and click free switching and no zipper noise) would make a lovely university project. It has scary hard RT code, user interfaces, DSP, the lot (Yes I know Charlie Richmond has done it already, it is still a cool project). IMHO something like this (which is not a solved problem, unlike say conventional lighting control) has room to be a really good project as the whole question of the user interface model is still very much up in the air, add in things like localisation in multi speaker setups and you are solidly into good honest research territory (with a useful product at the other end). Regards, Dan. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tomo Posted January 5, 2009 Share Posted January 5, 2009 I know the first question was not fully correct but if you look at half the other dissertations in my library at my uni most of them make false assumptions just because most software has already been created before, so really there's not much left to create, only adding features to "current software". which isn't really a good project for final year (so iv been told by my tutor)Then your tutor is wrong, or more likely you've misunderstood them.In certain fields that might be more or less true - for example, word processors are pretty much 'peaked'.Lighting control on the other hand - Congo v5 introduced an entirely new concept to effects engines, that's not (yet) available on any other console on the market. (Have a look at Congo Effect Playbacks). I'm certain that there are a great many amazing control paradigms that nobody has yet thought of.As to Tomo said about VB.NET isn't powerful enough for a real time control system, I use to work at Howden Kitchens writing software that controlled machines on production lines and they seem to work fine. Also most companies that actually installed the machines actually wrote most of the software in either VB6, VB.NET or Movicon which are really not the fastest software when compiled. but seems to work fine.I think you'll find that the software that actually runs the machines is NOT written in VB of any flavour.It'll either be C or assembly language, or (most likely) ladder logic on a PLC, as the latter drives the majority of industrial machinery. (It's easy to learn and incredibly fast). The only thing written in VB may be the custom front ends - "Make me a sink" isn't a real-time command, as it really doesn't matter if it takes a quarter of a second for it to realise you want to make a sink. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kev_bite Posted January 7, 2009 Author Share Posted January 7, 2009 It'll either be C or assembly language, or (most likely) ladder logic on a PLC, as the latter drives the majority of industrial machinery. (It's easy to learn and incredibly fast). The only thing written in VB may be the custom front ends - "Make me a sink" isn't a real-time command, as it really doesn't matter if it takes a quarter of a second for it to realise you want to make a sink. Your actually right they all used PLC to control everything, all the programs did was inject in to the PLC registers (I actually forgot it did that) and just keep checking what the current values are... hmmm ;) Kev Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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