README


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DISTRIBUTED-IO
==============
Manuel Traut <manut@mecka.net>

distributed-io is a software framework to group and control digital and analog
inputs and outputs that are distributed on different machines/boards.

The initial idea was to control turnouts / LEDs / servos of a model railroad.
They are connected to GPIO ports of some embedded Linux boards. The Linux boards
are connected to each other by a common (W)LAN network.

There is a central component called 'Manager' running on one board. Each I/O
pin of each board in the system is registered with a common name at the
'Manager'. A I/O pin can either be 'Digital' or 'Analog'. All registered pins
can be retrieved from the 'Manager'.

A 'Device' represents a real world object. For example a model railroad turnout.
It can use several I/O pins from different boards. It gets the I/O pins from the
'Manager' by a common name. A 'Device' can export 'Functions'; a turnout for
example 'left()' and 'straight()'. A 'Device' can implement a 'Callback' and
register it at several 'Analog' or 'Digital' Inputs with a trigger condition.
The callback is called by the input object, as soon as the trigger matches. The
'Callback' is called with the triggered input object as a paramter.
A 'Device' needs to be registered at the 'Manager' with a common name.

A 'Controller' can retrieve a list of all registered 'Devices' from the
'Manager'. The exported 'Functions' are also iteratable.

The interfaces

* 'Digital'
* 'Analog'
* 'Device'
* 'Manager'
* 'Controller'

are defined in CORBA IDL.

The 'Digital' and 'Analog' interface needs to be implemented if new hardware
should be supported.

The 'Device' interface needs to be implemented for each logical/complex device
that should be controllable by the distributed-io framework.

The 'Manager' interface needs to be implemented once and can be reused in each
distributed-io system.

The 'Controller' interface is the user interface. It can for example host a
webinterface or mobile application.