Model railroad package (was: Re: Increased Interest In Ada?)

[dirk@piefje.cs.kuleuven.ac.be (Dirk Craeynest)]

In article <970ma1$1l7$1@nh.pace.co.uk>,
Marin David Condic <marin.condic.auntie.spam@pacemicro.com> wrote:
> I could imagine Ada being popular in electrical engineering
> departments if there were a convenient and inexpensive (maybe free?)
> Ada environment for playing around with embedded computing. [...]
> I am thinking of Dr. McCormick's model railroad class [...]
> If [...] was packaged as "An embedded programming course in a bag" so
> that a prof could just pick it up and start teaching it, this might
> go a long way toward encouraging Ada as an educational tool as well
> as a practical tool for building real-world systems.
>
> (Does anyone smell commercial possibilities here? :-)

Some time ago, John McCormick told me he was looking into exactly that:
commercialising the hardware and software for his model railroad class
in order for others to be able to buy it "off the shelf" and use it for
similar classes at other universities.

I contacted him to check what progress has been made.  John's reply is
reposted here for your information, with his approval (see below).

Dirk (Dirk.Craeynest@cs.kuleuven.ac.be for Ada-Belgium e-mail)

--
Dirk Craeynest            | Email Dirk.Craeynest@offis.be | Ada-Belgium
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*** May 14-18, 2001, Leuven, Belgium **** http://www.ada-europe.org/ ***

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Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 08:35:15 -0600
To: Dirk Craeynest <Dirk.Craeynest@cs.kuleuven.ac.be>
From: John McCormick <mccormic@cs.uni.edu>
Subject: Re: Model railroad package? (2nd attempt)

Hi Dirk!

Just got back from a conference and am trying to get through all of the
e-mail that accumulated.  Yes we are still missing a good deal from the
old server.

I don't follow comp.lang.ada.  I am indeed working on just such a
project.  Ultimately it would include:

1. Printed circuit boards to make it easy to connect a model railroad
to one or more computers.  The connections are made through D/A, A/D,
and digital I/O on the computer end which should make it possible to
use just about any computer

2. An Ada environment for developing software.

3. A sample program that can be easily adapted to any railroad geometry.

4. An undergraduate level introductory textbook on real-time embedded
systems based on the train layout.  Of course, it will use Ada as the
development language.  This piece of the project is still in the
dreaming stage.

The hardware development is being supported by two local corporations:
Rockwell-Collins (avionics) and Maytag (household appliances).  My
target date for completing the hardware is the end of this summer.

Feel free to pass this information on to anyone interested.

John

-------------------------------------------------------
John W. McCormick                mccormick@cs.uni.edu
Computer Science Department      john.mccormick@acm.org
University of Northern Iowa      voice (319) 273-6056
Cedar Falls, IA 50614-0507       fax (319) 273-7123
http://www.cs.uni.edu/~mccormic/