Resmed Resscan File Format

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BlackSpinner
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Re: Resmed Resscan File Format

Post by BlackSpinner » Sat Aug 01, 2009 4:57 pm

Personally, I suck at VBA, so I find myself resistant to the idea of creating a complex macro in a distributed spreadsheet that would allow Joe User to make heads or tails out of his data.
One can upload excel as well as csv files easily - I have been doing that at work. Down loading them is a matter of creating an excel programatically which is also not difficult - been there, done that. You don't need VBA. simple formats are easy, more complex you need office dll's on the server but this creates security issues.

Security is an issue that decent programming techniques can mostly avoid. Everything can be hacked - that is a fact of life. We really don't need to store the data, just process it and return it back. They upload 2 files - historical, and the new read out from the card, they get processed and combined, an excel can be download, charts can be displayed and downloaded as pdf's and the new historical gets downloaded and saved. That way no data except membership gets saved online.

Everything uploaded will have to be checked for SQL injection and stuff like that.

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Re: Resmed Resscan File Format

Post by timbalionguy » Sat Aug 01, 2009 10:49 pm

I am very interested in this as well, with the caveat that I do not use Micro$oft products when I can ever possibly avoid it. I am also not a very good programmer at this time. I am willing to get better if it helps us get away from the problems like many are currently experiencing with ResMed.

I am also an IntelliPAP user, and would like to get away from the clunky Smartlink software. So many features of all this software are only needed by clinicians for managing multiple patients.

I would also vote for MYSQL as the database, as it is supported on all platforms.

I don't like the idea of a web service, and especially don't like the idea of micro-payments. However, contributing financially to the development effort is not at all out of the question.

As far as a programming environment, how about Ruby?

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kennethryan
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Re: Resmed Resscan File Format

Post by kennethryan » Sun Aug 02, 2009 12:06 am

I would be happy to share some of my data, possibly even artificially create some. I have an AutoSet (not II) and an Elite. I have ResScan 3.1 software. I would also be happy to help with testing.

The caveat is that my data and help would be conditioned on the resulting software being portable to Linux, and not under Mono (Mono has some legal issues WRT Novell's patent deal with Microsoft - that is supposed to expire in a couple years). I have a Windows machine to run precisely two applications (ResScan and iTunes) and have no interest in increasing the number of times I have to turn the stupid thing on.

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Re: Resmed Resscan File Format

Post by Pendragon » Sun Aug 02, 2009 1:31 am

What about... Code::Blocks, it's a cross platform Free C++ IDE
http://www.codeblocks.org/

Programs written in C++ can be compiled in Linux (with G++), Mac (?) and Windoze (Borland), and should work out well under all Os's.
Worth a look, I started playing with it today for a bit, but didn't get too far. due to time constraints.
Most of my programming is Robots, PLC's, CNC and Basic (VB), (some perl, PHP etc.) but I learn fast.
Yes I agree with the risks with web based, unless as was pointed out, nothing is kept but login info, and all that is done is conversions and a report returned to the user.
MySQL and varients there of are also free, SQL lite, PostgreSQL, then again almost everything in Linux is.
Many different ways to go here and many knowledgeable people on here to draw from, it shouldn't be too hard to pull something together. If it is to be open source, security isn't really a factor, as the source code would be freely available would it not?
Anyway, just thought I'd try & add some more food for thought.

Here's a little utility I wrote in VB in 2004 for converting weights, measures and temperature, if anyone's interested, 2.8 Mb. It also works in Linux, just need the fonts installed.
http://tcs.ods.org/download/multi_convert_102.zip
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Re: Resmed Resscan File Format

Post by jdm2857 » Sun Aug 02, 2009 8:21 am

Just curious about how you run a VB program under Linux without the MS .Net framework.
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Re: Resmed Resscan File Format

Post by Pendragon » Sun Aug 02, 2009 1:08 pm

jdm2857 wrote:Just curious about how you run a VB program under Linux without the MS .Net framework.
You use Wine. It simulates a windoze environment usually seamlessly in Linux.
With wine, you have a "C:" drive and program files, and a windows dir, along with almost all files etc needed to run windows apps. Kind of cheating really, but it works, gets us that little bit closer to being able to run all our favorite apps within Linux instead of windoze.
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Re: Resmed Resscan File Format

Post by jdm2857 » Sun Aug 02, 2009 10:51 pm

I've heard of Wine, but didn't know that it contained a MicroSoft Intermediate Language interpreter.
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Re: Resmed Resscan File Format

Post by Pendragon » Sun Aug 02, 2009 11:11 pm

Well.. now I've gone and done it. I was messing around in Linux and destroyed my whole system, and lost everything on my laptop.
Just got up and running again, now have to load all software again and start from scratch. I should learn not to change system files on a whim or for experimental purposes.

Better backups would be key here.
It's all good, I'll know better next time . Just a pain to install all my programming/database software again.
Sheesh!
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Re: Resmed Resscan File Format

Post by atab » Mon Aug 03, 2009 8:54 am

Using a windows specific software framework and running on Linux using Wine seem to be an unnecessary roundabout way of doing it. Let's use a cross platform framework. Personally, my first preference is Python. I don't know whether others are familiar, but the language R provides many high level facilities for data analysis. In any case, cracking the database is the most important part. If we rewrite the data in readable ASCII, then we can concentrate on a program that reads this data and analyze/display.

Do you think that we should form an email list to work on this as an open source project?

Atab.

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Re: Resmed Resscan File Format

Post by abq_guy » Mon Aug 03, 2009 10:37 am

atab wrote:Do you think that we should form an email list to work on this as an open source project?
Absolutely! If you dig far enough back into the topic history deciding on a code repository/SCC and a listserv were really the next two steps. I haven't been in big hurry to push this because we keep picking up new folks and more suckers (err.... programmers) = more parallel development translating to less individual work though risk is increased exponentially. At this point there are enough disparate topic threads to warrant a listserv so each thread can be independently spawned for continuity and history.

Once again, I am going to suggest that all of you with ADE preferences begin to order your thoughts in terms of listing Pros/Cons so we can develop a comparison matrix. If this is going to happen that is the "real" first step. I can see using Google apps and Skype as collaboration tools. Though I am sure there are other preferences.

-Guy

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Re: Resmed Resscan File Format

Post by BlackSpinner » Mon Aug 03, 2009 10:43 am

great idea for an eList
Lets see what a bunch of wide awake programmers who have a vested interest can come up with

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Re: Resmed Resscan File Format

Post by BlueHairBob » Mon Aug 03, 2009 2:07 pm

I have explored the SmartLink database. The current version of the software uses Apache Derby in embedded mode for the database.

I have also decoded the most detailed of the data files from the memory card of my machine. It uses 26 byte records. I have everything I need to start on a simple app to read the card directly and display custom reports. I will start on a data reader today. My exploratory work will be in C# on Windows. I will probably use SqlExpress for the database when I get to that point.

If anyone else wants to look into the data formats from this machine, I will be happy to share my findings. I will also be happy to contribute when a broader project gets going.

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Re: Resmed Resscan File Format

Post by Pendragon » Mon Aug 03, 2009 3:16 pm

Wow, Bob, you're a go getter, good start already. Way to go..

I think an email list is a good way to go too, so we can get it together. My reader is on it's way, so I should have it here in a week or so. ( Hopefully ).
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Re: Resmed Resscan File Format

Post by dsm » Mon Aug 03, 2009 4:14 pm

BlackSpinner wrote:re C# - there are packages which will create java from it. Many people like developing in Visual studio but are doing so for apache servers.
Also MYSQL is free and used on the net every where.

Think about creating a web service. using micro payments to bill to pay for the server. That solves the platform issue just up load the file and down load the excel.

Good point - I was also thinking that if anyone wanted to use an SQL database then MySql makes best sense as it is mature, robust, scalable and FREE. It also runs on Linux, Windows, Vista & most Unix versions. http://www.mysql.com/
Sun Microsystems took over control of MySql about 18 months ago. It has excellent support if that is needed.

I have used MySql (as well as MSSQL & DB2) for many years and find MySql to be every bit as good (better when considered FREE).
You can download a free set of admin tools to visually work on the data in the databases.

Good luck with this project.

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Re: Resmed Resscan File Format

Post by kennethryan » Mon Aug 03, 2009 6:14 pm

Question: Do we *really* need a SQL database? Is there really that much info that a modern PC couldn't sort through a
text file?

I love text files myself, since they are readily portable to other applications and uses.

My Resmed database: 8 MB for ~ 20 months data. Resmed appears to use one file per day, flat otherwise. I don't
see a big problem with that.

(I know, Rescan's performance is slow as a pig, but it's still slow even when it's not reading files).

Just a thought ... I know, I'm a heathen for not jumping onto the latest glitzy libraries. I program in straight C also.

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