Hi everyone,
I have been working on a GPS autosteer/guidance project for use on my farm in our farm tractors. I know, there are already a bunch of options out there but I'm hoping to expand it to integrate with our sprayer, seeders/planters and leveling scrapers. I'm also getting tired of all the upgrades necessary for new "features". My plan is to write the software for a windows tablet and thus be able to layout the interface the way we want it and also cut down our hardware costs to less than half. Now my time spent developing and programming will probably "cost" me more than just buying something but again, it's supposed to be better and we have use for up to a dozen units so there is the element of "mass" deployment.
So far I have spend about 2 months writing code in Visual Studio 2010 as a visual basic windows form, I have approx 2500 lines of code. For the coverage mapping component to this project, I believe I should be using some sort of 3d graphics platform such as DirectX or OpenGL. It seems DirectX has very little support in VB2010 so I have been looking into OpenGL (freeglut & glew) development in visual c++ 2010. I think my project is still young enough that converting my existing code to c++ will be worth it if it is necessary to achieve my goal. The goal of the coverage map is to show the area that the tractor and implement have driven and "covered" either with seed, spraying or harvesting. I'd like to be able to zoom, change perspective from top down to following from behind and even maybe rotate around the tractor. The coverage map would be updated about 10 times per second, probably at a maximum of 20 times per second (20hz), it depends on whether my steering algorithms benefit from the higher update rate and/or the gps equipment can output that update rate. I would have to figure out a way to translate lat/long coords to the 3d platform's X/Y/Z grid and then if the seeder or sprayer is engaged, draw a rectangle as long as the implement is wide and as wide as from the current position to the previous position to indicate that area as having been "covered". I'm thinking I will want the coverage map displayed on one or more windows forms, though not simultaneously.
My current development tablet/laptop has a HD3200 gpu and it only supports OpenGL 2 or older, the current windows 7 tablets I'm looking at support at least OpenGL 3.1.
So is my assessment of DirectX vs OpenGL accurate? I've started working through a couple OpenGL for c++ tutorials and it's quite above my pay grade, is there a platform or SDK that would suit my application or do I need to build my 3D application from scratch? Any recommendations in regards to staying with VB or switching to VC++? I have a decent amount of experience with the Arduino and some with Perl so c++ type syntax is not foreign to me.
I believe my biggest question is whether there exists a platform that would allow me to render the coverage map without needing to master all the background OpenGL functions/calls. If anyone has questions, please ask. Thanks.
I have been working on a GPS autosteer/guidance project for use on my farm in our farm tractors. I know, there are already a bunch of options out there but I'm hoping to expand it to integrate with our sprayer, seeders/planters and leveling scrapers. I'm also getting tired of all the upgrades necessary for new "features". My plan is to write the software for a windows tablet and thus be able to layout the interface the way we want it and also cut down our hardware costs to less than half. Now my time spent developing and programming will probably "cost" me more than just buying something but again, it's supposed to be better and we have use for up to a dozen units so there is the element of "mass" deployment.
So far I have spend about 2 months writing code in Visual Studio 2010 as a visual basic windows form, I have approx 2500 lines of code. For the coverage mapping component to this project, I believe I should be using some sort of 3d graphics platform such as DirectX or OpenGL. It seems DirectX has very little support in VB2010 so I have been looking into OpenGL (freeglut & glew) development in visual c++ 2010. I think my project is still young enough that converting my existing code to c++ will be worth it if it is necessary to achieve my goal. The goal of the coverage map is to show the area that the tractor and implement have driven and "covered" either with seed, spraying or harvesting. I'd like to be able to zoom, change perspective from top down to following from behind and even maybe rotate around the tractor. The coverage map would be updated about 10 times per second, probably at a maximum of 20 times per second (20hz), it depends on whether my steering algorithms benefit from the higher update rate and/or the gps equipment can output that update rate. I would have to figure out a way to translate lat/long coords to the 3d platform's X/Y/Z grid and then if the seeder or sprayer is engaged, draw a rectangle as long as the implement is wide and as wide as from the current position to the previous position to indicate that area as having been "covered". I'm thinking I will want the coverage map displayed on one or more windows forms, though not simultaneously.
My current development tablet/laptop has a HD3200 gpu and it only supports OpenGL 2 or older, the current windows 7 tablets I'm looking at support at least OpenGL 3.1.
So is my assessment of DirectX vs OpenGL accurate? I've started working through a couple OpenGL for c++ tutorials and it's quite above my pay grade, is there a platform or SDK that would suit my application or do I need to build my 3D application from scratch? Any recommendations in regards to staying with VB or switching to VC++? I have a decent amount of experience with the Arduino and some with Perl so c++ type syntax is not foreign to me.
I believe my biggest question is whether there exists a platform that would allow me to render the coverage map without needing to master all the background OpenGL functions/calls. If anyone has questions, please ask. Thanks.
