[PROJECT] Project core

["Broadfoot, Kieran J" <Kieran.Broadfoot@xxxxxxx>]

I was going to go to bed after piling through what seems like hundreds of
mails of the subject of projects but it got me to thinking.  I have to say
there have been some very impressive ideas over the last few days and has
left me very excited.

One thought on the subject is that we need a group of people to work on the
core software to manage these tools.  I was thinking more on the
discussions
we had on habuy about the types of hardware and software we were going to
use and it struck me that as with any good open system we should be
defining
the methods of communication rather than how it should be implemented.  As
such if Andy wants to build LCD panel type things he should be free to use
any type of pic/microprocessor he chooses as long as it is capable of
receiving commands in a particular format over ethernet.

This core system needs to be defining message passing, the type of messages
and expected responses.  It is also the glue that everything hangs off and
manages start time discovery of devices, handng out dhcp leases, managing
the network infrastructure and message passing between devices.  It in
effect acts as a management tool of a set of specific devices built to
handle very specific functions.

We could go back to the idea of using XML to define the protocol but its
not
essential any device is capable of encoding/decoding xml but rather each
device should be able to understand the messages it receives.

Any good project needs a name and I thought I might try out an idea used by
the Samba team.  They were implementing the SMB protocol so searched
through
the dictionary for works with smb in them in that order.  I did the same
for
UKHA:

lnsadc007.ln.eq.gs.com{broadk}47: grep 'u.*k.*h.*a' /usr/dict/words
buckwheat
bulkhead
bulkheads
Cruickshank
Gurkha
Tutankhamen
Tutankhamon
Tutankhamun
Tutenkhamon
Waukesha

;-)

Time for sleep.

Kieran



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