Basic Asset Tracker and Message Board
Web Page
Project tamb at Sourceforge
Related Links: Setup Procedure History
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Introduction
This application is intended
to be used to communicate the status and location of prototype boards during that
stage in the hardware development cycle where the initial prototype boards are
distributed to various software and system integration teams. Because not all
boards are identical, parts shortages and modifications are made to accommodate
the requirements of the teams, it is important that the locations and state of
each board be clearly communicated to all the developers in order to prevent
wasting time. At the same time, a full revision and asset tracking system may
be too complicated to set up for this early stage of development. This
web-based application helps solve this problem using a basic web-based message
board.
System requirements are:
- Net based connection
- Sytem running Apache with
PHP
- available Mysql server with
privileges to create, update, and alter tables.
Example Application
In version 1.0 there are three
web pages the user may display. The key page is shown below. The other pages,
a summary list of all the boards, and the administration page for adding and
deleting boards, users, and other information are shown on other links (Example
Summary Page and example Administration Page).
Figure 1 Example Board Status Page
Limitations
While there is no hard limit
on the number of boards that may be entered on a system, practically speaking,
more than twenty may make web navigation too laborious.
Future Work
-
timestamping entries
-
uploading documents of interest to
the project development community
-
more fields (board STATUS =
working, broken, …)
-
printing reports
-
saving the database information to
a portable format
-
scheduling functions (reservation
system)
-
copying summary.php to index.php
may confuse some
END OF PAGE.
Basic Asset Tracker and Message Board
Web Page
Project tamb at Sourceforge
Related Links: Home History
Setup Procedure
- Setup Apache on your
system.
- Apache should be installed
with PHP (version 4 or higher) support
- Locate the directory on
the system where documents are served from. When Mandrake Linux was
installed on my system, Apache was set up to serve from /var/www/html .As
I have root access to this machine, I did not investigate privilege
requirements in setting up either apache or the location documents are
served from. Setting up apache port 8080 (or any address higher than
8000) may be easier if root access is not available – check the apache
configuration file to see where the root web page is for ports other and
80.
- If the apache installation
is fresh, the file index.shtml can be accessed by the web and it
shows whether the version of apache is able to process PHP coded
documents.
- Rename the index.shtml
file to index.old or some other name to force apache to use the
supplied index.php file. NOTE: If there is an existing index.html
or index.php application being provided by this server, and this
asset tracker application is to be added, then either add a link in this
page to link to summary.php, or inform users to enter http://your-server-name/summary.php.
- Download the .zip file and Extract
Here or (unzip in Linux) to the web document root as determined in
step 1. The directory contents should look something like (global_val.php
is missing in this list):
- Setup mysql and mysql
tables.
- Mysql is required to store
data related to this application. Some mysql privileges are also
required for setup and operation.
- Edit the file tamb_setup.sql
in order to enter user data quickly. Change the values sections to the
desired set of names. If not changed the database will be set-up with
these default values and further changes will have to be made from the Admin
web page. Not a major undertaking, but it is a little less convenient.
Here is the default set-up script.
This defines 3 boards, 4 names, and 3 locations. NOTE: This script is
run only once; it DELETES any previous versions of the board table
in the database.
- Run the mysql script using
an account with the appropriate privileges. On my Linux machine, the
process looks something like (ignore the vi command – this is an editor
which you should not use unless you have familiarity):
- As mentioned in step 1,
either modify the existing index.html or index.php file, or
copy summary.php to index.php. In Linux the copy command is
cp so you would enter cp summary.php index.php
- Edit the global_val.php
file to provide mysql access information. Localhost refers to the
fact that the mysql server resides on the same system as the apache
process. The user name is one created and selected in step 2. NOTE that
mysql may install with the user root and no password. You could
use this if you have no concerns on security (local intra-net for
example).
- Accessing the web page
should now be possible.
Basic Asset Tracker and Message Board
Web Page
Project tamb at Sourceforge
Related Links: Home
History
Version 1.0 – 7 Sept 2006
-
initial release.
Basic Asset Tracker and Message Board Web Page
Project tamb at Sourceforge
Related Links: Home
Sample Summary Page Screenshot
Sample Administration Page
Screenshot