My name is Joel Koenka, a 3rd year PhD in the group of Prof. Peter Hauser
In our group, we build Analytical Chemistry instruments ourselves, and try to improve them with new ideas.
In the past few years, we've started using Arduino for controlling our various instruments, and I realized the need for a GUI framework for scientific instruments.
Currently, this market is controlled by LabView (National Instruments).
This is a very powerful software, but also very expensive. On top of that, many people find it hard to use, and specifically in our research group it led to frustration.
So being an experienced programmer, I set out to build a GUI framework for scientific instruments, that lets system developers to have powerful custom user interfaces for their systems, while requiring the minimal programming effort from them. This is key, as most system builders (at least in academia) have little or no programming experience.
I called it Instrumentino to imply it's meant to control Arduino based instruments, but I wrote it in a more general way, so other microcontrollers can be used instead (such as RaspberryPi, RedPitaya, etc.).
Attached to this email are two article (one already published and the second to be published soon) about Instrumentino.
The reason I'm writing to you, is that I want to keep developing Instrumentino, making it the open-source alternative to LabView, and to enable instrument developers have good and effective GUI programs to control their experiments.
To do this, I need some help. I've been developing Instrumentino alone for quite some time, and being a busy PhD student, I realize I need help.
I've heard about the Science working group of the Eclipse foundation by chance, during a scientific conference, where I met one of the guys behind OpenChrom, another project under the Science working group umbrella.
I think Instrumentino can fit nicely to this framework, and I hope to find other open-hardware enthusiasts to join me in perfecting Instrumentio.
Also, I hope to be able to integrate code pieces from other projects, adding capabilities to the system.
So I propose this as a project in the science working group. Is anyone interested?
Thanks and good day,
Joel
