Within the last two weeks the groups have split into two forces, each working on their own meter. Edwin and Alan duoing the QuadLogic sensor and meter respectively, while Anthony and I start work on just the meter portion of the Shark meter.
When we were being briefed on the design of the project, we would always hear that after the first set of meters/sensors are done it will become quite easy to complete the other three, just find the registers and then change them. I though that it would be simple enough for sure, but I was wrong about that on so many levels.
When I opened up the PDF manuel for the Shark meter, I expected to find some table index of the registers that stored the data, but soon did a realize that it was far from it. To be able to program for a meter you must fully understand how they work and what you are looking for. I spent half an hour pursing for some kind of register values until I locked onto something about using modbus to program it, yet I could not make out a single work on what I had read.
Our inexperience with these meters have really put a road block into the development. I could clearly see the difference between those who have spent hours learning how to deal with these things as Alan and Edwin have churned out an almost fully function Meter/Sensor pair within the two weeks, where as Anthony and I have basically some research on the inner workings of the meter and a lot of prewritten code by Alan.
I still remain optimistic of course and I hope to be able to finish at least our meter maybe with the help of Alan to push us in the right direction. For the four milestone we plan to have maybe three of the four meters/sensor pairs working.
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