Monday, April 28, 2008, 1:00 AM
Last update for the miniblog. Finished up the webpage by making a nifty banner in MS Paint and putting it at the top of most of the pages.

Thursday, April 24, 2008, 2:00 AM
Did a lot of work on the web page. Made a sidebar image in Photoshop, wrote the Download and Train OS page, and found all of my files, zipped them, and uploaded them to the site. The green/grey style is no more. Once I make a nice header image, the web page should be pretty much complete.

Also, that nice XML file I wrote? Gone. Lost to the abyss. Non-existant.

Wednesday, April 23, 2008, 9:30 PM
Finally done! Now that I've enjoyed a little bit of not-working-on-senior-project time, I'll detail how yesterday finished up.

The presentation went pretty well. Good news: when I tested the Train OS, it didn't work, but it did in the presentation, so I was able to demonstrate controlling the Simulator from the OS live. Bad news: when I copied the simulator to the hard drive for the presentation, I didn't copy the newest version. It still worked perfectly well, but the XML file I worked on was the old copy, so it looked jagged and out of scale. Whoops.

So, thanks to all the people who showed up to support me and me project, and to those who people who supported me even though they couldn't make it.

Tuesday, April 22, 2008, 1:30 AM
Here are the rest of the night's updates:

This leaves tomorrow to write the presentation, make sure the program works, and spruce up the track to look nice for the presentation. (The presentation is fully written but needs to be typed into PowerPoint.) I should easily have enough time before 1:00 to do all of this.

Tuesday, April 22, 2008, 12:00 AM
The sensors are fully implemented. That was a bit easier than I expected.

Monday, April 21, 2008, 11:40 PM
Sensors are now built and drawn to the screen.

Monday, April 21, 2008, 10:30 PM
Fixed the direction button. It was a pretty dumb error too... I changed the positions of the front end and back end according to a formula I drew up, which was perfect on paper. However, both depended on each other, so when I updated one, I screwed up the other. Insert temporary variable, fix problem.

I was pretty frustrated about it too. Grr.

Monday, April 21, 2008, 10:00 PM
Collision detection is now working perfectly. No more false positives, and it seems to be catching all of the right errors. The "very fast" simulator speed was very nice for testing this. Now for that direction change button...

Monday, April 21, 2008, 7:30 PM
You can now set a custom simulator speed. Yay for quick, nifty updates.

Monday, April 21, 2008, 3:30 PM
Talked with Blahnik and figured out what was wrong with the status updates (well, at the very least, I got it to work). I was using a Queue structure before, but I changed it to a List of Strings, and it all worked fine. Must have been something with the way VB shares Queues or something.

Monday, April 21, 2008, 1:45 AM
Finishing up for the night. Again, got a bit of progress, but I need a few more things before I can call this project "finished".

The simulator is now tracking the rear end of the train. The train was a dot before; now it's two dots connected by a thick line. Had to redo a lot of the drawing routine to draw the back end as well. Tommorrow, I'll have to fix the button that changes the train's direction... I broke that pretty badly now that the train's no longer a single point that just has to turn around.

Also, I have some collision detection in place. If two trains collide and neither track went through a junction in that timer tick, then the collision works perfectly. Need to put detection in for when trains do cross junctions. The structures are in place to do this now... I just need to go through the very complicated train movement logic to find the places where I need to update the "collision table" that tracks the locations of possible collisions.

No sensors yet, but I plan to implement those as a part of the collision system. Basically, I'll see if the trains "collide" with the sensors, and that's what will set them off.

Sunday, April 20, 2008, 10:45 PM
The Simulator can also read requests to switch turnouts and can read and implement the reset packet, which the OS doesn't send anyway. The stuff's in place to respond to AIU requests, once sensors are a part of the system.

Crunch time. There are a few major things that need to be done yet, and time's running out. Major things on the list: Track train's rear end, detect collisions, implement sensors.

Sunday, April 20, 2008, 8:30 PM
The Simulator can now parse packets from the Train OS that switch a given train's direction and speed. Unfortunately, can't get my reading thread to write status updates to the simulator's text box. I'll ask about that on Monday, I think.

Sunday, April 20, 2008, 1:30 AM
Did a lot of work on communicating between the Train OS and the Simulator. Learned how to create threads in VB, so now my ReadFile no longer stops everything else. Compiled, built, and fixed the Train OS so that it works on my machine, and so the DCC Manager tells me what it's trying to send to the simulator. I managed to set the pipe up correctly, so my program is now receiving messages from the OS... it just doesn't know what to do with them. That's next on the agenda.

Saturday, April 19, 2008, 8:30 PM
Been busy implementing the interface. Most of the buttons work now, so I'm able to change the turnouts, as well as the train speed and direction in real time, within the program's control.

Saturday, April 19, 2008, 5:00 PM
The user can now toggle the turnouts. For a touch of realism, it takes a little bit of time for the turnout to fully switch (and any train that hits it in that time de-rails).

Saturday, April 19, 2008, 4:30 PM
The program has been refitted for the new design model and is in working order once again. Two trains will now be able to collide in the four-way intersection, once I implement that.

Saturday, April 19, 2008, 2:39 PM
I was thinking about how to implement collisions, and it occurred to me that, under the current design, it would be impossible for trains to collide on the four-way intersection in the middle of the track. After some thinking, I came up with a pretty good solution, but it requires me to tweak the structure a little bit.

Previously, the Junction table held a value that marked which Turnout was associated with it. I have to do it the other way around now; the Turnouts have a Junction associated with them, allowing for multiple Turnouts on the same Junction. Then if the program finds more than one turnout, it looks for whichever Turnout contains the train's current segment and uses that to determine where the train should go.

Friday, April 18, 2008, 10:00 AM
Fixed the drawing routine. My problems were caused by two minor bugs.
Next: Add Train dialog box and make the simulator track the train's rear end.

Friday, April 18, 2008, 1:30 AM
The train logic is finished and has been working flawlessly. I've been having fun changing the turnout data and watching the train take different paths.

What isn't flawless, however, is the drawing routine. Actually, it needs a bit of work. It usually works, but on certain sections of track, it draws the train in random locations not remotely near the track (it pretty much either works or fails for the entire section, so I think parts of it are correct). I'll look into it more tomorrow.

Wednesday, April 16, 2008, 8:00 PM
Started and nearly finished writing logic for trains' movement from segment to segment. Logic is finished for when trains approach a turnout, but isn't written if the train comes to a junction without a turnout.

Wednesday, April 16, 2008, 1:00 AM
Had to redo all of Monday's work, because I hadn't saved it properly. I'm pretty frustrated by that, needless to say. It's done again, though, and it's redone in a way that makes one of my previous problems go away.

Tuesday, April 15, 2008, 1:00 PM
Preparing to write logic for trains to move though turnouts. Since turnouts will have thier own status, I've begun writing a class for them. I'll store a collection of turnouts, similar to trains. Class is mostly done, so now I have to worry about building the turnout objects and chaing the train's move logic to use them.

Monday, April 14, 2008, 11:45 PM
"It's the final countdown!"

Some time ago, when I was thinking about how to write the train's logic for moving from segment to segment, I realized that my track data needed to store one more crucial piece of information: where the turnouts are, and which segments will be available once the train gets there. I had no way to determine this.

Thankfully, I've solved this now. I've added a new type of object to the track XML file: a turnout. Turnouts have unique names, an id, and they are attached to a junction (one per junction). They are connected to three segments: the first, the "source" connects to two "branches", but each "branch" connects only to the "source". In other words, the source splits into the branches, and the branches merge into the source.

Also, the Track Editor now loads, displays, validates, and saves turnout data. Thankfully, I designed that pretty well, and adding full functionality for another table didn't take much time.

Thursday, April 10, 2008, 12:15 PM
Finished talking with Pankratz about named pipes. They finally work! So, the next step will be to figure out what Kratz's OS is sending to the hardware, make it use my pipes instead, and use that to call appropriate simulator functions.

Wednesday, April 9, 2008, 8:00 PM
I'm going to Purdue. Yay!

Continued the epic struggle against named pipes, and lost again. I understand this stuff a lot better now, but it still doesn't work. I'm hoping I can clear some of this up tomorrow. Unfortunately, all of the Internet resources that teach named pipes use Visual C++, not Visual Basic. Here's the example that I've implemented and tweaked, but it's not transmitting meaningful data yet: [1]
Good Visual C++ reference: [2]

Tuesday, April 8, 2008, 1:00 PM
Fought against named pipes for quite a while this morning. Didn't end up accomplishing much, unfortunately. I understand this stuff better than I used to, but I think I may have to fight the code for a bit longer to find out exactly how this stuff works.

Thursday, April 3, 2008, 9:30 PM
Finally got some more work done on the project; it's been quite a while. Looked up how to write named pipes in Windows and built a very basic pipe to connect an external program to the simulator. The pipe works, so I can now work on sending meaningful messages to/from the simulator.

Tuesday, March 25, 2008, 1:00 PM
The train is now drawn in the correct spot when it is on a track with a bend.
Next: Learn about socket stuff and develop a way to make the train travel on any track.

Tuesday, March 11, 2008, 1:00 PM Did some work on detecting which bend the train is on. Developed a sort routine for the bend table, which needs to sort by two columns. Drawing the train on bent tracks shouldn't be too far off.

Sunday, March 9, 2008, 9:50 PM
Made some great progress today. Thankfully, the code I wrote yesterday actually supported multiple trains, so I found that the program had no trouble running two trains at once. Found a convenient way to redraw the trains every second without erasing and redrawing the track, which takes much longer. Developed the algorithm to figure out where the train should be placed on the screen and draw it (the trains ignore bends for now and just run from node to node, ignoring where the track actually is).

Took a screenshot, too. Four trains are running simulataneously; one has been deleted. All of them are running around the outside loop, going directly from green dot to green dot. Here's what it looks like: Image

Friday, March 7, 2008, 9:50 AM
A train is finally on the track. I made the framework for the train class, wrote a simple function to make the train move around the outside of the track, and made it move on the timer and print to the status window. I'll post a screenshot when I get a chance.
Note for Later: I'll have to redefine turnouts in the XML. I have to know which segments the train can move to next. It's hard-coded for now.

Thursday, March 6, 2008, 9:30 PM
I think I've finished the track editor validation. Hopefully. Also, I spent a while today measuring the actual track and some of the trains that run on it, so when I start making the actual simulation (hopefully soon), it will be determining the train's position and speed based on realistic values.

Thursday, March 6, 2008, 11:30 PM
I reworked the track editor validation procedure, and it's about half done. It's a lot better than before, and I've now written procedures to check for nulls, duplicate primary key values, valid foreign keys, valid numeric values, and other things that involve a bunch of database jargon.

Tuesday, March 4, 2008, 1:00 PM
Thought I was done with the editor. I was wrong. There's a lot of validation to be done... tried to use the track editor on my own, and it crashed when I tried to open my new track. So, I had to rethink how I validated my data and redo it. I have the better part of it done, but I'll have to validate as I load the data as well.

Thursday, February 28, 2008, 4:20 PM
Finished the track editor. It now saves to XML, so I guess it's done. Divided as much as I could into modules, and made the code much easier to work with. Also, I added a timer, so it now accurately simulates a track with no trains.

Tuesday, February 26, 2008, 1:00 PM
Finished the validation in the track editor. I'm working on getting it to save... it's not working correctly yet, but I think it's close.

Tuesday, February 26, 2008, 1:06 AM
Refined the track editor quite a bit. It loads the XML file and places all of the data in the right tables. Instead of loading from that file "track.xml" every time, it now asks which file you want through a file dialog box. The first table prevents you from entering duplicate names. If the user has already loaded an XML file in the simulator, the track editor will contain that track data when it opens. I'll add some validation, get it to save, and most of my work on that module will hopefully be finished.

Thursday, February 21, 2008, 7:00 PM
Drew up a quick diagram of the main modules and processes of the program. Blue boxes refer to processes with their own window. Image

Got some progress on the track editing routine. Made a framework. Basically, I have four spreadsheet-like grid boxes that the user will use to input data, and then that data will be validated and saved to XML files.
Here's the screenshot: Image

Tuesday, February 19, 2008, 11:30 AM
Fixed bug in the last note. Added "bends" to the XML file. A bend is basically a sensor with position, but is not a sensor. It contains the distance from node1 and its position. Rewrote the segment-drawing function to draw bends.
Next: Add bends to XML.

Tuesday, February 19, 2008, 1:25 AM
Had some problems with the drawing. The screen would erase whenever I switched windows. After a lot of searching, I found out how to avoid that by using a buffer. It's working well now.

Changed program to display small images (green circles for now) at the junctions instead of lines. Also, I've managed to get the track segment drawing routine done.
Here's what it looks like now: Image

Next: Check out bug when track is loaded twice. Add drawing nodes to data format. Draw sensors.

Tuesday, February 12, 2008, 7:30 PM
Replaced the entire parser with one line of code. Wish I would have known about DataSet.ReadXml sooner.

The simulator is now displaying the track's junctions, positioning them based on the XML data. Nothing sophisticated, but it works.
Here's a screenshot of the working track drawing routine: Image
Compare it to the track layout: Image

Tuesday, February 12, 2008, 5:30 PM
The program correctly parses all of the junctions and spits the data out in the Status text box. The rest of the parser should be very easy.
Next: Put the data in something meaningful. The VB DataSet class looks promising.

Tuesday, February 12, 2008, 3:00 PM
I actually had a lot of trouble with the XML parser. Changed the DTD to an XSD, since DTD's are not used much anymore, apparently. But, things are working again, so I can move forward.
I'll upload the XSD file here later.

Monday, February 11, 2008, 10:56 AM
The application can now read from my XML file. Yay! It isn't parsing it yet, though.

Monday, February 11, 2008, 12:46 AM
Doing some web page work. Got it to work in IE, finally.

I've been looking at the XML and comparing it to Kratz's track representation. I updated the one I posted earlier.

Here's an explanation of the XML: The basic element of the track is a node, which has a location and perhaps turnout information. Segments connect those nodes, and have stored lengths. Sensors can be placed on segments, and their positions are stored as distance from the segment's "node1", whichever one that is. Sensors would also have AIU data.

It occurred to me not long ago that drawing the track based on this data might be extremely difficult (at the very least, it would take an absurd amount of time to develop the algorithm with the way the track data is currently represented). I'll likely have to store some way to tell the computer the shape of the track, but I'm not sure what yet. Perhaps more nodes. A lot more nodes. Dozens, at least. It's just an idea at this point.

Thrusday, February 7, 2008, 6:45 PM
Wrote timeline. Here's a useful resource for using XML in VB: [1]

Tuesday, February 5, 2008, 12:26 PM
Checked some of the previous projects for references.
Here are some of Chris Kratz's that may help: [1] [2] [3]
And here are his track definitions. I'll use my own format, but his data should be good: [1] [2]

Idea: I was worried about error conditions, but that shouldn't be bad at all. I could use a dropdown menu of possible errors, and let the user trigger them. For instance, one option could cause a train to stop responding, and then it wouldn't respond to certain commands.

Note to Self: Make webpage look good in IE. Check it in Opera.

Monday, February 4, 2008, 2:20 PM
Doing some research on past railroad projects to learn something about the railroad itself, and making up some time for the progress I didn't make last week.

Oh, and I added my resume and computing philosophy statements some time last Friday, but forgot to update for it.

Tuesday, January 29, 2008, 12:48 PM
Finished the XML file. Also made a DTD to validate it.
Here's the DTD: DTD

Monday, January 28, 2008, 2:54 PM
Looked up the actual track layout and started converting it to XML.
Here's the XML: XML
Here's the track layout: Image

Monday, January 28, 2008, 2:09 PM
I've decided to put the track format in XML. That should make the files easy to understand. I'm working on the inital track layout.

Sunday, January 27, 2008, 3:24 PM
Did a lot of work on the VB application. List of updates, since I'm accidentally doing this at the end of my work period instead of throughout:

Here's a screenshot of the program as it is right now: Image
Near Future: Learn more about the railroad to see what the simulator should do. Draw the track.

Wednesday, January 23, 2008, 3:02 PM
Webpage looks a bit better now. Cross-browser compatibility sucks. At least the CSS is nice and tidy now.
I'm thinking the best way to make the custom tracks is to store the lengths of each track. I think it's the easiest for the user.
Near Future: Building a basic VB program.

Tuesday, January 22, 2008, 3:10 PM
Got the Problem Spec today and uploaded it. Made minor webpage changes.
The biggest worry so far is the custom track design. Making a track layout that makes sense to both computer and user may be tough.

Monday, January 21, 2008, 2:39 PM
Started writing the webpage today. It's simple, but it works. The whole webpage consists of the main page and this one.