ScaleManager

Introduction

ScaleManager is a tool for the management of portable electronic scales as used by racers. The initial version is in the planning stages. The software will take advantage of scales with serial output, collect information about cars and weights, and provide for printer output and management of data.

The focus, for now, will be on supporting the needs of tech chiefs at SCCA National and Regional races per the SCCA General Competition Rules. I am not averse to supporting other requirements (e.g., NASA, and internationalization for non-US users), but the races I chief are SCCA club races, hence the choice of initial target audience.

The first version will be implemented using a set of Longacre Computerscales® DX scales equipped with the PC Download option (just acquired by NYR SCCA, for whom I am chief of tech.) Intercomp versions may follow if a developer comes along who has access to an appropriate set of scales. Versions of the program oriented towards the needs of racers engaged in car setup may follow as well.

Features

The "ultimate" version of Scale Manager will be able to collate lists of minimum weight requirements from various sources for comparison with actual readings. There will be modes for "drive in" usage for car owners/drivers looking to verify their weights on official scales, and for weights taken in impound which require detailed logging and car identification. Official weights will be saved to a persistant datastore, with retention policies that are configurable by the administrator.

Proposed Software Environment

ScaleManager will be written in Java, and will be targeted at a variety of laptop operating systems (Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows Y2K/XP). Early experiments were written using the Netbeans Platform framework, on a Toshiba Satellite 2805-S302 running Fedora Core 1 Linux. The code has since been moved to a Mac Powerbook, and the first working code to read scale values was written and tested there. RXTX will be used to manage serial, usb, and parallel ports. Apache Derby will likely be used to provide an embeded SQL backend for persistent data store, possibly using Hibernate as an intermediate layer.

Hardware

Technical details of the Longacre PC Download may be found Here. Initial work has used Keyspan USB->Serial adapters with good results.

Sourceforge Resources

Summary

The Sourceforge summary page may be found here.

CVS

The CVS repository may be found here.

Discussion Forums

Discussion Forums may be found Here. At this early stage, I recommend using the "Open Discussion" forum while hashing out wishlists and requirements.

License

The license for this project is the modern 3 clause BSD license.

Contact

The project admin is Richard Welty, rwelty@krusty-motorsports.com.


SourceForge.net Logo