[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

[school-discuss] CCProbe, open source probeware/science investigations

Hi,

I've been lurking for quite a while on SEUL and SchoolForge and I want to announce some open-source probeware we have developed we call CCProbe.  

CCProbe supports sensor and model-based visualization and analysis along with a Lab Notebook for saving and communicating probe data and views. Written in Waba and available under the GPL it runs on PalmOS, WinCE, PocketPC, Windows, MacOS Classic, MacOS X, and Linux.

What is very exciting to us is that it works on handheld computers.  We see broader use of handheld computers in schools as a very exciting direction for students.

Right now it only works with an sensor interface we have designed (we are looking for a publisher/manufacturer) and a branch of the code which also works with the MELD interface, http://www.execpc.com/~fdeck/meld/.

I am looking for people who would be willing to test and comment on building it from the source code.  We've been the only ones building it and I'd like to get the precedures and instructions firmed up before wider distribution.  If there are any Java programmers out there who are interested in possibly adding support for more interfaces I'd love to talk.  For example the Metex ME-21 digital multimeter with an optically isolated rs-232 interface: 

http://www.jameco.com/cgi-bin/ncommerce3/ExecMacro/Jameco/searchResult.d2w/report?sort=BKW&search=me-21

We have RealBASIC software already written which supports graphing data from this multimeter available here: http://concord.org/slic/smart-dmm.html

You can download versions of CCProbe that work for almost any OS platform and also get the source code at this site:

  http://concord.org/ccprobeware

Let me know what you think!

For more background on why and how probeware is great in a science class check out:

  http://concord.org/themes/probeware.html


-- 

-- Stephen Bannasch
   Director of Technology, Concord Consortium
   37 Thoreau Street, Concord, MA 01742
   direct: 978 371 3477, fax: 978 371 0696, main: 978 369 4367
   http://www.concord.org  mailto:stephen@concord.org