ModularSensorSystem

Main Features

• Plugin-based architecture
  • Sources
  • Data Processors
  • Physical Mounts
• Simultaneous data recording
• Data visualization
• "Clipping" feature
• Real-time data processing
• Efficient and organized UI/UX

Build Guide

1. Pull the repo
   • The lead developer (@m-riley04) uses Visual Studio 2022, so it is recommended to use that IDE for development.
   • Support for other platforms and IDEs is planned, but not yet implemented.
2. Install Qt 6.8.3
   • Use the official installer and the official Visual Studio extension for easy setup.
3. Install vcpkg and use it to install dependencies
   • The project uses a vcpkg manifest file to manage dependencies, so you can run vcpkg install to get everything set up.
   • The build process for the dependencies may take a while (anywhere from ~1 hour to ~4 hours), so be patient.
   • After the first build of the dependencies, they should be cached, so subsequent builds will be much faster.
4. Open the solution file in Visual Studio
   • The project is set up to use C++20 and Qt 6.8.3, so make sure your Visual Studio installation supports these versions.

Environment Variables

The project uses the following (manually-set) environment variables to locate plugins:

• GST_DEBUG_DUMP_DOT_DIR - This is the directory where GStreamer will dump debug dot files. This is mainly useful for development and debugging of GStreamer pipelines.
• GST_PLUGIN_PATH - The directory where GStreamer plugins are located. This will be the plugins/gstreamer folder in the vcpkg installation directory.

To make this easier, a property sheet named MSSEnvVars.props has been created. This is mainly only for the frontend/runtime environment.

Known Issues

GStreamer Include Paths on Windows

For whatever reason since 2021 (from what I've found), there has been a bug with vcpkg and specifically with the gstreamer library on Windows. I've found a few issues on it (2021, 2022, 2023).

Because of this bug, the following paths need to be added to the Additional Include Paths of the project:

• $(_ZVcpkgCurrentInstalledDir)/include/glib-2.0
• $(_ZVcpkgCurrentInstalledDir)/lib/glib-2.0/include
• $(_ZVcpkgCurrentInstalledDir)/include/gstreamer-1.0
• $(_ZVcpkgCurrentInstalledDir)/lib/gstreamer-1.0/include

This has been simplified for you by adding these paths to a property sheet named VcpkgIncludeDirs.props. Add this property sheet to any project that uses vcpkg dependencies to resolve the issue.

GStreamer pango Plugin Hash Error

When building the dependencies, you may see an error related to the hash for pango having a mismatch.

This is a known issue with vcpkg and can be resolved by doing the following steps:

1. Download the tarball for pango here.
2. Append "GNOME-" to the beginning of the downloaded file's name, so it becomes GNOME-pango-1.54.0.tar.gz.
3. Move the file to the downloads folder in your vcpkg installation directory.
4. Re-run vcpkg install/build.

Documentation and Development Resources

External documentation is found in the docs directory. The following should help you get started:

• Architecture Overview
• Naming Conventions
• GStreamer Docs
• Qt Documentation]

Dependencies

• Qt 6.8.3 (can be installed and linked using the official installer and Visual Studio extension)
• All other dependencies are managed through a VCPKG manifest file
• GStreamer (installed through vcpkg, but reccomended to install locally for global debug tools)

Development Journal

Development journal entries can be found in the docs/development_journal.md file. These entries are just neat/interesting things I've found over the course of development that might help someone else in the future. My headaches are your gain!