Here we will detail what each member of the group put towards the final system that was developed. We believe that each member of the group put in equal contributions to the final system, and that each member was necessary in order to achieve our final system.
James developed a substantial portion of the software powering the system. This included initial testing and interfacing with the hardware, initial research and development, setting up of all hardware components and developing all main functional code for inter-device communication and conflict resolution. This code was then double checked by the remainder of the team to ensure that it was efficient and performed as expected. The final software is a culmination of all previous stages to make a final robust system that can safely and effectively power the system, integrating all externally developed components from other team members into a fully working product. Although James developed a large portion of the actual interface code, the functional code to get the Phidgets interfacing with the Google Earth software was developed by the other members of the team.
Matt helped with the design process of the system, selecting which input and output devices would be most appropriate within the form factor we have used. He built the physical controller, and chose the most intuitive positioning of the I/O devices. He helped in pair-programming the handlers for each of the input devices, ascertaining thresholds and ensuring no interference between them. Matt created the ’Sweeper’ class, which handles automatically scraping location data from Google Earth. This data is used to reprogram the RFID tags.
Craig developed VB code that looks for an open Google Earth window. If it exists, the program automatically switches to it. He also developed a Java program that runs this VB code, and also developed the Java robot that automatically targets the search box in Google Earth, types in a search term and searches for it. He also contributed with the initial research of the project, reading the documentation and helping with the initial setup of the hardware.