QuickCM
Curing Concrete with techBASIC
We occasionally see some pretty cool applications from customers. Here’s one submitted by Kai Scheffer. The app was prototyped in techBASIC, then finished in a combination of techBASIC and Objective C using techBASIC App Builder and XCode. The show above shows the raw devices; the image to the right what they look like ready to go into the concrete.
The free app is available from the App Store. Contact Kai directly to order the hardware. Take a look at the screen shots. You can see some plots that will look familiar to anyone who uses techBASIC, as well as a couple of very clever ones that are more difficult to create, but are certainly possible in the hands of a clever programmer.
The app is available in English and German.
Drop me a note at our support line if you would like to showcase your own techBASIC projects on our web site.
I’ll let Kai tell you about the project in his own words.
Tuesday, June 3, 2014
Not only programmers and developers of Internet of Things devices are plagued with keeping up the schedule. Also house builders have to maintain theirs. Take for example the long drying times which are required for concrete waiting to get ready for the next building step. This could take anything from 30 to 60 days depending on weather and other conditions. A young company based in Germany and Switzerland came up with the neat idea to measure and monitor the moisture level directly inside the concrete and take the iPhone to analyze the data. A new IoT idea was born.
Now comes the question how to prototype and proof such an idea. By discovering techBASIC as an ideal software prototyping platform, the first demo was built in a matter of days. The QuickCM system was born. It uses a smart sensor and networks it via BLE to the iPhone or iPad. The iPhone is used to manage and control the individual sensors. It further uses the graphics and touch screen for visualization. It uses also the GPS system in order to store permanently the sensor location for later reference. Finally the sensor data is then processed and sent directly via cloud service to the Internet. Optionally the data could be sent via email directly from inside the App. So that make techBasic the heart of controlling the entire system.
After prototyping with techBASIC the application evolved into a stand-alone universal iPhone app, still using techBASIC and its Objective C run time environment. Some features by then have been complimented by native iOS programming and connecting the iOS system on an application level to the techBASIC world.
There came also the idea of launching different app versions. The support for techBASIC running with Objective C made it possible to integrate into Apple's Xcode iOS development system.This made further app development seamless and easy. To generate different app version the originally monolithic techBASIC source code was then split up in modules and a basic-pre-processor is used to splice the pieces for different apps together.
The QuickCM app was approved and is now ready for download. Thanks to this idea building a home is getting a step closer to downloading things over the internet ;-)
How techBASIC supports building your new home