Consumable Tracking App

[rosonowski]

NEW Version! Actually saves your values and log!

plasmabuddy_v1.png (41.59 KiB) Viewed 1385 times

PlasmaBuddy.zip

(221.43 KiB) Downloaded 96 times

consumable_tracker_v1.png (45.88 KiB) Viewed 1711 times

So I know there's some code for consumable tracking in mach3, but I wanted something that functioned more like a notepad and a pen in terms of 'is it time to change that consumable yet?'

So I hacked up a little app and now I'm sharing it with you guys.

I was going to go through all of the trouble of doing standard/metric and then I decided "meh, whatever. you either use inches or you use cm, and you can remember. You're smart people."

A few notes: I have no idea what the expected life on these things are, and even if I got the right names. There is no persistence, that is, it won't save values if you close it. That's something for a future version, if there's interest. Is there interest? What else would you like to see? I'm a computer science student on break and I need a project =p

[pertneer]

I like the idea. curious to see how you are tracking the progress of each.

I will look through the code and see if I understand what you are doing. I have a minor in programming (very minor, lol). I do think the cap needs to be named nozzle though as that is the correct term for it.

[rosonowski]

Really, it's not that complex. Pretty much everything happens in Form1.cs and visual studio handles all the hard parts like rendering to the screen and making buttons and input fields and so on. I mostly included the source code so anyone who knows how to read it can tell there's nothing malicious, since I have such a low post count and all.

So the nozzle and electrode are the two major ones to track though, right? The shield, retaining cap, swirl ring and whatnot get changed much less often by my understanding, but I've been more concerned with the computing side of things and only have a cursory understanding of how the torch actually works.

I attached an 'updated' version with the labels changed.

[pertneer]

I understand why you shared the code and no there is nothing malicious in it at all(for other who can not read source code). A couple of things you may want to consider is keeping the tracking information when the app closes. Currently when you close the app it loses the information. Depending how far along you are in your education you may not have covered that type of thing yet. I was working on it the other day for you but have reached a stumbling block myself and I am researching how to overcome it. When I get it to that point I will send it to you in a pm for you to look over and post if you would like.

[rosonowski]

Yeah, I know it doesn't store anything, this is just something I hacked together real quick. If I had been working in C++, I could have just sent everything to iostream and written it out to a file. In Visual C#, 'good form' says I should serialize the object to XML, which I'm still reading about. I've got event handlers for the form loading and closing, it's just a matter of learning how serialization works. Since there seems to be interest, and it's something I need to learn anyhow, I'll post an updated version when I add that.

[pertneer]

I will be looking forward to this in the future. Since I really only know java and VB I have been just improvising to get it to store the information. So as you say good form( which is not my specialty) would be better for you to learn. I will not confuse you with my trials (and errors ), but I always love learning these things as well.

[rosonowski]

plasmabuddy_v1.png (41.59 KiB) Viewed 1386 times

So the semester finished out a few days ago, and I finally found the time to finish up the basic version of this. I'm still hoping to add some more robust logging functionality, maybe some statistics... dunno. Ideas?