From 50456fd250b8224fce14c86e96c7c850422df185 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: saji Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2024 05:32:20 +0000 Subject: [PATCH] Update readme.md --- readme.md | 32 +++++++++++++++++++------------- 1 file changed, 19 insertions(+), 13 deletions(-) diff --git a/readme.md b/readme.md index ffee87d..0942a33 100644 --- a/readme.md +++ b/readme.md @@ -9,6 +9,7 @@ Features: - TCP streaming system based around MessagePack-RPC for LAN control/inspection. - XBee integration and control for long-range communication. - HTTP API for easy external tool integration. +- SQLite database format for storing telemetry, and tools to work with it. `GoTelem` provides a flexible system for ingesting, storing, analyzing, and distributing @@ -20,20 +21,23 @@ telemetry information. There are probably two questions: -1. Why a telemetry library that runs on an OS? +1. What's this for? 2. Why is it written in Go? -To answer the first question, the needs of the telemetry board are ill-suited for a microcontroller -since it requires doing multiple non-trivial tasks in parallel. The on-car system must ingest -all can packets, write them to disk, and then transmit them over XBee if they match a filter. -Doing fast disk I/O is difficult. +Telemetry is an interesting system since it not only involves a microcontroller on the car acting as a transmitter, +it also requires software running on a laptop that can recieve the data and do useful things with it. +Previous iterations of this PC software usually involved Python scripts that were thrown together quickly +due to time constraints. This has a few problems, namely that performance is usually limited, +APIs are not type-safe, and environments are not portable and require setup. -There are also significant advantages to moving to using a Linux system for telemetry. We gain -Wifi/Bluetooth/network support easily, we can integrate USB devices like a USB GPS reciever, -and we can share common tooling between the car code and the receiver code. +So we aught to invest in better tooling - schemas and programs that make working with +the data we collect easier and more consistent, as well as being [the standard](https://xkcd.com/927/). +This tool/repo aims to package several ideas and utilities into a single, all-in-one binary. +While that's a noble goal, design decisions are being made to support long-term evolution +of software; we have versioned SQLite databases, that are entirely standalone. I chose to write this in Go because Go has good concurrency support, good cross-compilation, -and relatively good performance. +and relatively good performance, especially when compared to interpreted languages. C/C++ was eliminated due to being too close to the metal and having bad tooling/cross compilation. @@ -44,7 +48,7 @@ robustness of the code. Rust was elminiated due to being too different from more common programming languages. Likewise for F#, C#, D, Zig, Nim, Julia, Racket, Elixr, and Common Lisp. Yes, I did seriouisly consider each -of these. +of these. C# was a viable competitor but had issues with the cross-platform story. Go has some quirks and -isms, like lacking "true" Object-Orientation, but the language is designed around being normal to look at, easy to write, and straightforward to understand. @@ -58,7 +62,9 @@ own system, and it's a single executable to share to others with the same OS/arc ## Building -`gotelem` was designed to be all-inclusive while being easy to build and have good cross-platform support. Binaries are a single, -statically linked file that can be shared to other users of the same OS. Certain features, like socketCAN support, are only enabled on platforms that -support them (Linux). This is handled automatically; builds will exclude the socketCAN files and the additional commands and features will not be present in the CLI. +`gotelem` was designed to be all-inclusive while being easy to build and have good cross-platform support. +Binaries are a single, statically linked file that can be shared to other users of the same OS. +Certain features, like socketCAN support, are only enabled on platforms that support them (Linux). +This is handled automatically; builds will exclude the socketCAN files and +the additional commands and features will not be present in the CLI.