Thanks for the reply Eko. Now that I have made some decisions, this gets to be OT, but I will answer on the list for anybody interested and then gladly continue privately if there is further interest.... > Umm.. Could someone enlighten me, what is data acquisition? > Is this something related to industrial automation? In general, I think of data acquisition as getting some (usually) analog value from a sensor or device into the computer for crunching. Years ago I did this with a data logger and thermocouples to monitor temperatures in a furnace I was working with. But that was a batch process...get it in the logger, dump it to the DEC and crunch. I want to do it "live" now and I want to do it across an ethernet connection. I've wanted to play with this idea for something like monitoring weather, just for the fun of it. Now someone has asked me to do some minor industrial stuff with them. This gives me an excuse to start doing what I want to do (throwing either Brer Rabbit into the the briars or the turtle into the river depending on where you live) It looks like I'll do that all in Linux as long as interface boards and drivers are available for Linux (and many are). >Guess this would meant for local/short range private network >that not connected to the internet in any way? Could you be >more specific? What are the data sources? Should the >processing real time or not? Let me see if I can be more specific now that I have had time to think and read about it....The specifics of sensors are not really important. It could be anything from toggling a pin on a parallel port to running a PLC. The issue, as I see it, is one of communicating a stream of data in something like "real-time" - but I don't need it to be absolutley deterministic so long as the data comes in a fairly steady stream - between two (or more) computers on an ethernet and getting that data displayed. My immediate application is for in-house monitoring and control of some (as yet unspecified) industrial devices - but no need to limit it there. Once you are in the world of TCP/IP going to internet level is no problem. The few things that seem to me as likely solutions are running RPC's (Remote Procedure Calls) on an NFS enabled SurvPC, working with some sort of custom Daemon that uses its own sockets, or serving up dynamic web pages with a CGI program that gets the data. I like the last and am focusing there right now since I am not the best C programmer and it simplifies the human interface. So what kind of ideas am I looking for here? Well, just that, ideas - not THE solution - maybe a DOS robot daemon that you saw and thought was interesting, or a system that remotely displayed temperature over a TCP/IP link. As long as it took data from some low level or device driver and moved it over the network to another PC which displayed or manipluated it, then it might help. The thing that's hard to come by is code samples. I am, as always, scouring the net looking for things - the Computer Controlled Home sites, Industrial sites, etc...but maybe somebody has seen something that might give me the idea I need. And since much of my looking is in the Linux sites, maybe there is some DOS material I've missed. Thanks in advance for any ideas. And let me offer to pass along my links to anyone interested in this topic or industrial controls under Linux. Just ask me off list. Bob Williams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Trillium Technologies Enterprise General Santos City, Philippines To unsubscribe from SURVPC send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe SURVPC in the body of the message. Also, trim this footer from any quoted replies. More info can be found at; http://www.softcon.com/archives/SURVPC.html
