Ariadne - Technical description

Description

Remark: (Dec2008) The Timy interface via usb has been discarded for use in Ariadne. The Timy USB has proved unreliable. Once in a 100 timing events a half timestamp is received. Or you miss a start or finish, or you don't get noticed of that and process a wrong time.

For Ariadne the TIMY USB interface has been discarded in favor of the serial interface. Refer to AriadneTime.

1. Processing Timy messages over the USB interface.

The collection and processing of Timing events form the Time is time critical. Therefore the processing is done in a separate form in Ariadne. Each form in MSAccess has its own message pump for event handling. By processing the Timy events in a separate form, the event processing is not interfered with other events.

The Timy interfaces uses two external COM components: the USBIO230.dll for interfacing with the Timy over USB; and the Ariadne EventDispatcher.exe, that forwards events to processes in- and outside Ariadne.

Remark:

The USB interface to the Timy via USBIO230 is not 100% reliable. Once in a 100 - 200 timing events, the interface misses the first or second part of a timing message. Initially I thought it was due to the not thread-safeness of MSAccess. But the problem occurs als with a dedicated .NET program. The problem occurs also in the Alge-Timing provided Flash manager for the Timy. Alge-Timing does not recognize it.It is not clear whether the problem is in het Timy, the USBIO230 component or in the using program.

Access path

F600 / F610 / F620	Timing event processing
F660-Timy-interface	Process timing events from the Timy via USB

Function structure

Used components:

- USBIO230.dll - the Alge-Timing provided USB interface component for the Timy
- EventDispatcher.exe - Ariadne COM component (singleton) to distribute events.

Change history