At 09:52 AM 7/27/2001 +1000, Markus Buchhorn wrote:
Well, if we're adding wishes to this list... :-)
Allow this control application to run over the network, so that one operator can manage multiple nodes, or a remote operator can manage a given node.
Oh definitely -- so that I can also control the node from my laptop while sitting on the couch :-)
At first blush, a web browser would make a very nice harness for this. Perhaps implement as Apache modules? (apologies to Jay ;-) ). Save you having to develop at both ends of the network pipe (as with e.g. a Java applet).
I'm thinking the architectecture would have some number of agents connected to the actual devices (gentner, PTZ camera, remote-controllable apps) that speak a common interface (XMLRPC maybe) via some published API. The API would include mechanisms for authorization and authentication so that control would be exported only to those a site wanted to allow control. Given that web servers then can speak XMLRPC (there exist client libs for PHP & perl/mod_perl...) an apache backend could speak to those. A custom client could also be built, speaking to the same XMLRPC agents.
We could also pick up some of the hacks that allow you to drive the various PTZ cameras through a web page. It could also hook into monitoring/logging systems...
Yup. The LBL folks already have a daemon that will run the Canon & Sony ptz cameras. It doesn't speak XMLRPC, but it could be modified to do so or a translation agent built. --bob