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Development and simulation environment for Holiday by MooresCloud

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HOLIDECK

The development and simulation tool for Holiday by MooresCloud.

Holideck provies a full simulation environment for Holiday by MooresCloud. It is functionally identical the behavior of the actual hardware, which uses the same code base.

Invocation

% python holideck.py

When holideck launches it opens two ports on the localhost, one for simulator access, the other presenting the web app interface to Holiday.

The HTML5 simulator simpype will try open port number specified in the configuration file holideck.config. It defaults to port 8888. If that port is unavailable, it will increment the port number until it finds a free port.

IoTAS, the Internet of Things Access Server, will try to open port 80 (which is only possible if python has been run with root privleges), or if running as a user program, will try to open the port number specified in the configuration file holideck.config. It defaults to port 8080. This port is often occupied by other applications (Apache, Tomcat, etc), so IoTAS will increment the port number until it comes to an available port.

All of which is to say that the simulator could be found on port 8888, but might be at a higher port number, and IoTAS could be found on port 8080, but could easily be at a higher port number. Change the port numbers in holideck.config if you want the servers to use different ports.

The port numbers are given in the output generated by holideck as it is initializing.

To quit holideck, simply type a Control-C in the terminal window.

Holideck - specifically IoTAS - currently produces voluminous output for debugging purposes. Eventually, this will be moved to a log.

Using Holideck

Holideck is designed to provide a complete simulation and development environment for Holiday by MooresCloud. It is implemented in pure Python.

Holideck is composed of three pieces:

simpype

Simpype is the HTML5-based simulator for the Holiday. Simpype simulates the 50 individually-addressible 24-bit colour globes on the Holiday.

To use simpype, point a browser to the simulator's web page

  • generally that will be http://localhost:8888, with the caveats as given above.

You should see something like this:

simpype in browser

What looks like a dashed-line extending from the Holiday image on the left side of the page is actually the string of globes, with each globe initialized to black.

The Javascript in the page loaded by simpype will poll the simulator at approximately ten updates per second, so you do not need to reload the page to see updates to the simulation.

The simulator can be opened in multiple browsers simultaneously, with the caveat that each browser will poll the simulator at 10 Hz, so many browser windows pointing to a simulator instance will produce quite a bit of load on the simulator.

IoTAS

The Internet of Things Access Server, or IoTAS, provides both the RESTful interface to Holiday by MooresCloud and the web-based application, control and configuration interface for Holiday.

The interface for IoTAS looks best on a mobile device.
After holideck has been launched, point a mobile device to port 8080 (or possibly higher, with the caveats given above) on the computer running holideck.

For example, if the computer running holideck is named iris.local, you should point your mobile browser to http://iris.local:8080. The home screen for Holiday's HTML5 web app interface should then load:

holiday home screen

To test holideck, tap on the 'API demo' icon, flip the switch, and - if the demo is working correctly - you should see a random selection of colors sent to the simulator.

IoTAS defines a detailed RESTful interface to Holiday by MooresCloud. This will be documented in the holideck wiki.

Holiday web apps

MooresCloud has created a number of demonstration HTML5-based web apps. These can be used and adapted for your own web apps.

A number of these apps, although included within holideck, are not yet fully functional and should not be used.

The apps which are functional include:

Colorwheel - Select a colour from the colorwheel, and the entire string of lights on the simulator will reflect the color change.

API Demo - Generates 50 random colour triplets and sends them to the simulator.

NRL - Prebuilt color patterns for all 16 teams in Australia's National Rugby League.

More Caveats

Holideck has been tested on Linux (Ubuntu & Mint), OSX 10.7 & 10.8.
There have been problems under Windows, and the latest release should have fixed those problems, but we rely on reports from you to let us know if we've done our jobs. So if you have a Windows system, please give it a test!

This is an early release; there are bound to be numerous problems. We apologize in advance for this.

If you have any serious problems, please mail me at mpesce AT moorescloud DOT com.

All of this code is released under the MIT License, a copy of which is included in this repo.

Mark Pesce
MooresCloud Pty Ltd

August 2013

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