Search code examples
pythonsocketsarchitecturegpssensors

Python for sockets sensors gui system

I am new to socket programing and SW architecture.

My system must be : a GUI in my laptop using python. There are many embedded systems with same sensors ( GPS, Temperature, pressure ...). Each time you select an embedded system, my program needs to establish a connection with it , I need to show its GPS position and the real time feed of its sensors in the GUI ( For now the GUI is not the problem, I can do with Kivy or Tkinter).

This is how it must function :

  • In the GUI, there is a field to enter the ID of embedded system and a button to try to connect with it.
  • When the button is clicked, the program establishes connection and shows GPS, Temperature and pressure in real time continuously until connection is lost.

I was thinking of doing it with this architecture :

  • A thread to deal with the GUI
  • Each time a button is clicked and an embedded system is found, an object of a class I created is instantiated.
  • The class has as attributes :
    • list GPS ( to store GPS feed)
    • list temperature ( to store Temperature feed)
    • list pressure
    • a thread_socket ( the socket is created in a thread to be a client to the embedded system. So each time an object is instantiated of the class, a separate socket is create )
  • The class has as methods :
    • Get_Gps() : Each time this method is called the GPS list attribute is updated
    • Get_Temperature() / Pressure()
    • Stop() : When this method is called the embedded system needs to shutdown.

In the socket thread, I have methods such as send_message() and receive_message() to send through TCP/IP the request for getting GPS and sensor data or stopping the system.

On each embedded system I will put a server using python that is set up everytime the system starts. This way the ID of the system is the ip of the server, And my laptop would be a client, searching for the ip adress when I select a system.

My questions are :

  • Does this architecture seem alright to you ?
  • Is it correct to receive real time feed in a list ? for example for the gps.
  • Each time I find a system I instanciate an object to keep things clean, is this a good way to do it?
  • Do you see any issues or improvements ?

Thank you in advance,

Solution

  • I think your approach in general is fine.

    However, you should keep a few things in mind:

    When designing your software, you should first identify the different tasks involved and define separate functional units for each task. This is the concept of separation of concerns.

    I also suggest to read a bit on the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern: In your case, the model would be your class containing the data structure for the measurements and the business logic (e.g. polling data from a source for example every second until the connection is stopped). The view and the controller might both be located in the GUI (which is absolutely fine).

    The GUI is not necessarily an explicit thread, but many frameworks rather work with an event-based concept that lets you define the application's behavior for a given user interaction.

    Why do you actually need lists for the measurements? Is there a requirement to keep the history of measurements over a certain period of time? Is this a list that will keep growing and growing or rather a rolling list (e.g. for showing the last n seconds/minutes of measurements in the GUI)? There seems a bit of a contradiction to starting a new class instance with every new connection, because you would obviously loose the contents when you stop the connection and terminate the instance.

    Hope this gives you some ideas of how to proceed from there.