Stansifer, Ryan | Engineering Papers

NASA NTRS2000

A Visual Editor in Java for View

In this project we continued the development of a visual editor in the Java programming language to create screens on which to display real-time data. The data comes from the numerous systems monitoring the operation of the space shuttle while on the ground and in space, and from the many tests of subsystems. The data can be displayed on any computer platform running a Java-enabled World Wide Web (WWW) browser and connected to the Internet. Previously a special-purpose program bad been written to display data on emulations of character-based display screens used for many years at NASA. The goal now is to display bit-mapped screens created by a visual editor. We report here on the visual editor that creates the display screens. This project continues the work we bad done previously. Previously we had followed the design of the 'beanbox,' a prototype visual editor created by Sun Microsystems. We abandoned this approach and implemented a prototype using a more direct approach. In addition, our prototype is based on newly released Java 2 graphical user interface (GUI) libraries. The result has been a visually more appealing appearance and a more robust application.

Stansifer, Ryan↗

NASA NTRS1996

Visualization of Real-Time Data

In this project we explored various approaches to presenting real-time data from the numerous systems monitored on the space shuttle to computer users. We examined the approach that several projects at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) used to accomplish this. We undertook to build a prototype system to demonstrate that the Internet and the Java programming language could be used to present the real-time data conveniently. Several Java programs were developed that presented real-time data in different forms including one form that emulated the display screens of the PC GOAL system which is familiar to many at KSC. Also, we developed several communications programs to supply the data continuously. Furthermore, a framework was created using the World Wide Web (WWW) to organize the collection and presentation of the real-time data. We believe our demonstration project shows the great flexibility of the approach. We had no particular use of the data in mind, instead we wanted the most general and the least complex framework possible. People who wish to view data need only know how to use a WWW browser and the address (the URL). People wanting to build WWW documents containing real-time data need only know the values of a few parameters, they do not need to program in Java or any other language. These are stunning advantages over more monolithic systems.

Stansifer, Ryan↗