Basic experimental control in Erlang

[Matthew McDonnell]

Hi,

I have been working on an Erlang application to act as the interface
layer between a high level experimental control program and low level
hardware.  The code is at a stage where it may be of some interest to
others learning Erlang/OTP, so I have put it on the web at the link
below (the bulk of the page is the problem description, links to code
are at the bottom of the page in the Code section)

http://www.matt-mcdonnell.com/code/code_erl/expt_otp/expt_otp.html

There are two programs, both having equivalent functionality, one
written in Erlang and the other written using the OTP behaviours.
Each program starts:

- a Pascal program that simulates a microcontroller under control from
  an external computer and randomly outputting data,
- a port controller that controls access to the Pascal program
- a GUI that communicates to the Pascal program through the port
  controller

Basically, once you start the GUI you get a window with four sliders,
the first three of which send data to the port, the last one plotting
data received from the port.  Not very exciting at the moment, but
hopefully it will be soon.

Still a bit buggy, most annoyingly the Pascal program dumps core when
it exits.  I think this is probably a Pascal problem rather than an
Erlang one, but any solution, and indeed any comments in general,
would be welcomed.

Cheers,
      Matt

Matt McDonnell
Email: matt@REDACTED
Web:   http://www.matt-mcdonnell.com/