Project Discription

Main Goals and Functionalilty
The project is meant to develop an interactive wall screen where the use of keyboards, mouse, etc. will become relatively unnecessary. OM is a moderately sized touch screen that will contain a user’s calendar, prescription information, grocery list, and task list. The main purpose of OM is to make the user’s life organization easier and less of a hassle. OM will also include a light sensor to turn the screen off during the night hours. When the screen is turned off, the user may touch the screen to turn it back on should they need it while it is dark in the room. An external alarm will also be added to produce an audible reminder of events that the user requests to be notified about so as to not miss the event. Pill taking reminders will also run through this alarm. Lights will be included to indicate the current function that is being used so that the user will know what they are doing in case they get confused.

Intended Users and Purposes
The intended users of OM would be the average person at their home. In the future, it will be fully compatible with palm software to allow users to synchronize their palm pilots with the calendar. Family calendars can be seen with ease by all members of the family to prevent forgetting important sports games, doctor appointments, and medication intervals. Potential for further development OM can, in theory, be expanded in many ways. For example, a small printer may be added to allow users to print out their grocery list to take to the store and check items off. A scanner could take that list and remove the items that were purchased, leaving the ones that have not yet been purchased on the list until the user finally does get them. OM can be integrated with a art fridge and can keep track of what is actually in stock and how much. The user may be able to go online with OM, find a recipe, and have the ingredients automatically downloaded into the smart grocery list which can interface with the refrigerator to remove items that are already in stock.

Potential Challenges
Due to the CIP grant funding, the price of the screen will be easy to overcome. In the prior semester, this was the largest problem with getting the touch screen. Also, the size of the screen should make purchase much easier and each group member may be able to have the screen to test their code. QT is the largest problem because of two reasons: accessibility and knowledge. QT is a software package that has to be licensed. A trial license lasts thirty days and other licenses generally require payment. We will be using the Windows API, and so, we may move to the MFC framework for the user interface design. Intended Technology We will use Windows and will be utilizing as much open source code as possible. We may be using these languages to create this project: C/C++ and Java (for its possible Swing components) and, depending on the ease of use, QT by Trolltech for the graphical user interface design.

Professional Growth
This project will give us an intimate knowledge of user interface design, as well as touch screen technology. From the lack of information on the internet about the development of touch screen technology and software, it seems that someone with these skills would be highly sought after in the job market. Also, development of a complete software system will be a great learning objective to assist us in learning to work in multi-disciplinary and multi-member groups on software and hardware systems.