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Andreas Bauer

diploma thesis

master's thesis

Pulse oximeter

Touchpanel UIs

photography

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Diploma Thesis

(@ Siemens Building Technologies, Nuremberg)

Title: Software-/Hardware environment for remote diagnostics and controlling of multimedia components

Abstract: This thesis focuses on the design an implementation of a server-application. The software receives malfunction messages and automatically alerts a service technician via e-mail. In addition to that a smaller application for remote controlling multimedia devices is developed - the remote-access-software. An AMX media-controller is used to translate between device and software. Also part of the thesis is the selection of a LAN/RS232-bridge that can be used as an alternative for the AMX media-controller.

I used the Qt-toolkit in the development process. The server-application (see the picture below) is connected to an SQLite-database where all the service-technician and asset data is stored. It can be accessed directly through the application. When a media-control-system (e.g. from AMX) notices a malfunction in its asset, the server-application can automatically be informed. The software then sends an e-mail to the assigned service technician which holds all necessary information about the malfunction and the asset-owner's contact details. At the same time the application stores all the information about this service call and keeps track of its status. If the service technician doesn't close the call in time, he will receive another e-mail that functions as a reminder. If the call stays open for too long it will escalate which results in another e-mail.

The user can also call a service technician directly via the media-control-system's touchpanel. The picture below shows my designed interface.

After the call is transmitted, the user is informed that a service technician has been alerted (see picture below). This message also holds the call's ID which can be used to reference the service call within the server-application (database).

I also implemented a small software tool to remotely access the assets using a media-control-system from AMX or a LAN/RS232-bridge. Since the idea of a software-media-control-system sounded really amazing my advisor at Siemens wanted me to create a large software-tool which focuses on controlling several multimedia devices within a network, is able to handle complex control scenarios and has an easy to use graphical editor for programming these scenarios. I focused my master's thesis on the development of this application. See master's thesis for further information.




flyer
flyerTouchMaintenance.pdf flyerSieNetControl.pdf







Master's Thesis

(@ Siemens Building Technologies, Nuremberg)

Title: Management solution for the implementation and administration of multimedia components in company internal networks

Abstract: This thesis focuses on the design and implementation of a software environment for controlling multimedia components. To operate the devices they are integrated into a network via LAN/RS232-bridge. From now on they are remote accessible using the software application. To store the control commands, a local file format is developed. An integration of a graphical editor allows the user to easily implement his own control scenarios. Also part of the software environment is a client-application by which the main control software can be accessed via network.

Here I also used the Qt-toolkit to write the application. The picture below shows the main part: the control software. It's a complete rewrite of the remote-access-software from the diploma thesis and it adds a lot more features. On the left it shows the navigator that holds all the installed multimedia devices. The user can attach simple control commands to each unit e.g. to turn of a projector. The software also allows complex control scenarios that are called macros. For example those macros can be used to automatically shut down all projectors on one floor each Friday at 8 p.m.

The macros are designed within a graphical editor, the macroeditor (as shown in picture below). They consist of small elements that among other things will send RS232-commands, receive data from a device or analyse the received data to make a decision on how to proceed (conditional statements). That way the user only uses point-and-click-actions to program complex control macros.

Because of the conditional statements the macros' main paths can branch and therefore become trees, so called macro-trees. A simple example of such a tree is shown in the picture below. The application uses an XML-syntax to store these macros. Therefore a file format was developed, the MMRA2-format (Multi Media Remote Access v2.0).

To trigger such a macro the application displays the user some kind of a small interface as shown in the picture below. When selecting a device in the navigator the program lists all available macros (and simple control commands) as a set of such small interfaces. The user can then for example activate a macro to read the lamp time of the projector at the conference room.

A smaller client-application (see picture below) can be used for example on a notebook to access the main software from any place in the building. After the user identified himself he gains access to all explicitly enabled macros.




flyer
flyerRemoteAccess2.pdf







Pulse oximeter

(@ Georg-Simon-Ohm University of Applied Sciences)

Title: Development and implementation of a Pulse oximeter (embedded design)

This was our student project in the 7th-8th semester. We - Thomas, Juergen and me - built a pulse oximeter with an Atmega324-PTQFP44 microcontroller. For measuring the pulse and the oxygen-level we used a red and an IR LED to shine through the proband's finger. The receiving end held an TSL230R light to frequency converter - which is an absolutely amazing device! To show the the measured values and how they develop over long periods we used an UG-9664HSWAG01 OLED-display.

I was responsible for the schematic on how to attach the OLED, its power-up/-down sequences, the controlling of the display and the actual presentation of the results. I used predefined characters to implement the user interface.

To simplify the development process I wrote a small application to simulate the OLED. (NOTE: sending data to this OLED is not as straight forward as one might think ;) ). The two pictures below show sample curves of pulse and oxygen values within the simulation application. My developed user interface scales the grid automatically to always show the whole curve.

We also once showed the measured pulse directly on the OLED just for fun, which can be seen in the photograph below. I may add that this was my strong and very masculine pulse that we've measured but I guess you've already figured that one out by yourself ;)








Touchpanel user interfaces

(@ Siemens Building Technologies, Nuremberg)

Title: Design and implementation of touchpanel user interfaces for different systems.

During my daily work at Siemens Building Technologies I designed a lot of different touchpanel user interfaces - mostly for the AMX system. Below you can see some samples.

Siemens Automation and Drive

Siemens Building Technologies