Date: Tue, 9 Nov 1999 14:23:06 -0500 From: "Michael Rothenberg" <rothenberg@automationonline.com> To: "Joss Roots" <osiris2002@yahoo.com>, "Oren Sarig" <sarig@bezeqint.net> Cc: <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: Patient Monitoring (NO FreeBSD really) Message-ID: <00fe01bf2ae7$d9db40a0$3301a8c0@baffle.ias.com>
next in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
the following is not really related to FreeBSD: The first thing you really need to do is call all the equipment manufacturers and determine if their machines are capable of outputting data through the serial port in the first place. Dont waste your time if they dont even have the capability to squirt info out the ports. A lot of equipment will have some capability to get instantaneous values. HP will probably use GPIB (look at local engineering book store for info or WWW) if anything at all, but I am not sure about the others. If the machine can talk, then get a detailed description of the command structure (protocol) and what kind of response you should expect to get for each command. Usually each command will have some kind of response to tell you it was received and acted upon or the response will hold the data you asked for in some format. If you skip talking to the sales people and get in with the tech support engineers they usually will send you anything you need. Few sales people really know the machines to this kind of level. Once you receive the info on the commands you have available to you, you can make a determination as to if you can get the data you want out of the machine. Usually, you wont get live feeds from the machine and will have to poll it every few 100 ms or so (for windoze anyway). You can poll as fast as your comm setup will allow, but its usually pretty slow like 2400/9600 baud. Newer machines sometimes get up to 19.2. This means you wont have true 'real time' but its kinda close enough for most applications. Medical might be different though. Lots of rules there. If you are only displaying the data and tracking it without the responsibility of acting on it then you might not have much to worry about. I have never done a system like this in FreeBSD. Only that windos stuff. On win systems its a piece of cake with any number of 3rd party comm libraries so I expect it wont be that hard on FBSD either once you find the code. Of course, getting the data is usually the easy part. Once you get the data you have to figure out what to do with it and thats the fun part!! Enjoy! -Michael ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Michael Rothenberg Systems Engineer 617.354.3830 ph Intelligent Automation Systems Inc. 617.547.9727 fx Cambridge, MA, U.S. www.automationonline.com ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?00fe01bf2ae7$d9db40a0$3301a8c0>