|
Journal - Week 3
::: Day 1 - Monday 06/20/05 ::: It is amazing that it is already the third week of my internship. I was excited to go to work today because I knew I'd be working on a new thing. Vinod and I talked this morning and agreed that I will start working on the Bluetooth Client/Server applications. I am still unfamiliar with all the code involved in the the communication between two Bluetooth devices but that's why I am here - to learn and apply my knowledge. We decided that for the next couple of weeks I will be trying to create a client/server application what would transmit the information my GIU program needs (energy and temperature values and node coordinates). I will have to write a server that runs on one computer and sends info to a client. The client will use the GUI interface I have built to display the info. I looked into some sample programs and read through the code. I also went back to the Swing tutorials to check for a couple of things. I spent most of the morning doing that and doing changes in the GUI. I mentioned that on Friday I had an idea but no time. So today, I worked with the windows that display coordinates and added some extra space where the x and y values were displayed as a pain of integers (eg: node 1 at (67,45)). In the afternoon I started playing with the a sample client application and modified it a little. I created by first MS-DOS Batch file :) and also read some posts on the Java Forums. I also spent some time off
the computer, coming up with a simple algorithm for the client side.
Pen and paper always work great when you are trying to come with
algorithms for applications. I decided there will be a button
"Obtain Data" and when clicked it will perform the
following actions: I left work a little early and went to check out the special library at UMASS for sciences and engineering. I got an XML book to look through when I have time ... And now I am home - kind of tired, but excited about the rest of the week. I feel it will be interesting and challenging.
::: Day 2 - Tuesday 06/21/05 ::: The first thing I did this morning was to go back to the readme.txt file and update it. I wanted to include a couple of words about the addition of a panel in some of the windows that shows the node's
coordinates as ordered pairs. At lunch I met with Natalie and she took my to the Computer Science building where she works. She showed me her lab and I met one of the grad students there; the we headed to the CS lounge where we had a cup noodles lunch. After lunch I went back to my lab and continued working on the server code. The initial example I had was transmitting data in the form of bytes and converting it to a string (for example, "Hello from Server!"). What I am trying to do, on the other hand, is have integers and doubles transmitted over the Bluetooth network. therefore I tried changing part of the code so that I could transmit the number of nodes in the network and possibly a array of doubles (energy, say). I spent around an hour debugging the code I had written because quite a few things had gone wrong when I was modifying the already existing code. (No wonder profs always tell you that it is easier to just write your own code than modify something..... very very true.) Finally when I had debugged the client and the server files, I tried running them. Unfortunately the communication between the two computers didn't happen as expected. I think it is a problem with the data streams. The original code used InputStream and OutputStream, and I tried switching to Data Streams but that did not work. Tomorrow I will research what stream is the best to use and also if I use the ones used in the examples, how to convert my data from byte (coming from the stream) to int and double. Now I am back in my dorm room typing and looking out the window. It is so beautiful. I can see the mountains and the pink sky. Today is the longest day of the year and even though it's 8:15pm the sun is still out there. It's a beautiful sunset and I really feel lucky I am not stuck somewhere without nature. I love the burning orange clouds surrounding the sun! Edit: Just now I had some time to play in Photoshop and made a little something for visual pleasure. You can click here to see. Please note that the image quality is not great because the lab computers have nothing but paint for saving and manipulating images. Enjoy!
::: Day 3 - Wednesday - 06/22/05 ::: I have been frustrated today because I made no progress. The state of my Bluetooth project has not changed for the past 24 hours. What I have been doing is tons of research online to see what Input Stream would be best for transferring integer and double values via the Bluetooth link. After I initially looked into the streams available in Java, I come to the conclusion I could use a DataStream. I've used that before for reading and writing various data types to/from file. It seemed easy from there but I kept getting bugs in the code and was unable to run my client and server. All I was trying to do is transfer one integer from Vinod's computer to mine, using the Bluetooth devices. Well, it didn't work. So I spent most of the day trying to figure out various problems. I also read more in depth info on Java streams because as Vinod said I should use this opportunity to learn. Vinod's been very nice to me and encourages me to work and learn. He told me not to worry too much because I have enough time to complete the projects. He understands that when it comes to Bluetooth things are not so simple. I tried google-ing examples of programs for Bluetooth written in Java but to no avail. We all thing we can find any information on google, but with some topics that's just not true. Sure, there is a lot of stuff on Bluetooth but it's all technical and theoretical information, not real code. The examples I found were pretty much similar (all were transferring strings), and none of them addressed the issue of transferring primitive data types or objects. I now realize that Bluetooth is a new technology that still has not touched many in the CS field. I guess that's what makes it interesting - there is much to be developed in the future. Towards the end of the day I decided to go back to the original examples I have and start modifying them again following a slightly different idea. I know that this will not resolve the problem I was having today, but will put the communication algorithm in better order. One of the reasons I decided to start from scratch was that even the original files I have did not work properly this afternoon. I suspect tomorrow will be a day of testing and more research until I get it working. Once I manage to transfer the first integer, the rest of it should go more smoothly.
::: Day 4 - Thursday - 06/23/05 ::: Today I spent the most of the day trying to get the client-server
::: Day 5 - Friday 06/24/05 :::
::: Day 6 - Saturday 06/25/05 ::: I woke up to good warm weather and leftover food from the night before. Matt is at work till 3pm so I can just hang out the apartment and relax. I've been browsing the internet and most importantly following the Bulgarian news websites because it's election day at home. Things don't seem good but you have to respect the view of the masses.
::: Day 7 - Sunday
06/26/05 ::: I am still in Boston but by myself because Matt is working all day long (10am - 6pm :::sad:::) I could have gone back to UMASS but I like staying at Matt's apartment even when I am alone. It feels like home. I've been reading an XML book most of the morning/early afternoon. I got the book from the UMASS science library because I wanted to get a basic, high-level overview of the XML technology.
::: Week 1 ::: Week 2 ::: Week 3 ::: Week 4 ::: Week 5 ::: ::: Week 6 ::: Week 7 ::: Week 8 ::: Week 9 ::: Week 10 :::
|
|
::: home ::: about me ::: mentors ::: journal ::: report ::: links :::
|
|
Maria Kazandjieva - makazand@mtholyoke.edu - last update: 06/27/05 |