Last week I visited the nice people of Sense OS. They offer a very powerful platform for working with sensor data: CommonSense. I talked to them about hosting my breathing_time performance on their system.They are enthusiastic about the project and want to take on the challenges that they’re up against.
The idea is that I make an account especially for breathing_time that will include the 5 wind sensors. The main challenges are: synchronisation of the different data streams and the real time aspect. As for synchronisation all the participants will have to install Network Time Protocol (NTP) software. This will ensure that all the computers use exactly the right time.
The data will be near real time. Every device will send an array with 5 data points every 500 milliseconds. And every second it’ll retrieve the 10 most recent data points for visualisation. We will use threads to make sure that hiccups in the connection or the network won’t disturb the flow of data. A local time stamp will be used to ensure every device always has the most recent data.
This sounds like a sound strategy the ensure flow through and speed. We’ll have to test of course to see how quick the data is send.
It’s been very nice talking to experts in this field. I feel the server side aspect of the performance is in safe hands with them.