Robert Ramey Software Development Homepage

TechView

Vetronix Corporation, Santa Barbara
Applications for uploading and manipulating data files captured by a hand held vehicle monitoring device to a PC via a serial port.
Major Features
  • Written in VC++ 4.0
  • Used the following libraries: Comm++ from Greenleaf, Extensively modified MFC graph libary from Stingray, Compresion library from PKZip, Internet component downlaod from Microsoft.
  • Data is uploaded to PC connected to a tester or to a stand alone program via telephone line and modem. The Telephone line monitor application functions without operator interaction to save data to disk files. Up to four phone connections can be handled simultaneously.
  • File viewer application permits viewing, graphing, saving to disk, emailing files uploaded from the device, or selected from Windows file explorer or from on WEB page links.
  • The file viewer was integrated into WEB pages via Microsoft Explorer Internet Component Download service. Web pages can include special HTML tags which cause Internet Explorer to determine whether the latest version of the application is installed on the users machine. If not, and security settings permit it, the application is automatically downloaded, and configured for the users environment. Henceforth, web pages could contain links to these types of data files on any server on the WEB. If a newer version of TechView is placed on the web site, the local copy is automatically updated.
  • All national language dependent resources are held in separate DLLS which permits switching between languages while the program is in operation. The program starts with the language specified by the current user in the Windows 95 settings. Languages implemented were English, Japanese and Spanish.
  • When directly connected to a hand held vehicle monitor this application can graph vehicle operating parameters in real time. Real time data can be captured to disk files for later use.
  • Applications operate under Win 3.1 via Win32s.
These applications are being deployed by American and Japanese Honda divisions and American and Canadian divisions of Toyota Corp. If you are using Internet Explorer 4.0 or higher, you can install this package automatically just by clicking this icon TechView
If you are using some other browser you can install the package in the following way:
  1. the zip file.
  2. Unzip to separate directory.
  3. Invoke the program setup.exe in the directory.
  4. Execute the program TechView.exe
  5. Open a demo *.tvw file to view and manipulate a graph
Note that in both cases, the files to be transfered are approximately 700K. Contrast this with the package described above. This package is much more elaborate but results in a file size 1/4 of built using the the VB approach. Its much faster as well.