WebCell Script File Updates

I spent the spring of 2009 working on my implementation of the FAT file system. A year earlier I had it reading files from an SD card, but now I wanted it to write to the SD card. Before the start of summer I had the essentials working – creating folders, creating files, and writing data to files.

This gave me the opportunity to relieve a long-standing annoyance. Up to now, when I wanted to test a new or updated script on the WebCell, it took a few steps:

• Remove the microSD card from the WebCell.
• Put the microSD card in an SD adapter.
• Plug the SD adapter into an SD slot on my monitor.
• Copy the test script from the PC to the microSD card.
• “Eject” the microSD card.
• Remove the SD adapter from the monitor.
• Move the microSD card from the adapter back to the WebCell.

Now that the WebCell could write files itself, this process could be eliminated by sending the file to the WebCell over the network connection. And the way to do that was with FTP – File Transfer Protocol. I set to work on the implementation.

On July 9, 2009, I used FTP on Windows Explorer to copy a test script from the PC to the WebCell. This was a satisfying if not momentous milestone. Program size on the WebCell with FTP completed was at 55,510 bytes out of the 65,536 bytes available.

With the WebCell receiving files by FTP, I felt obligated to add an FTP client to the CellScript simulator. The simulator allowed me to edit scripts, so it just seemed wrong if it couldn’t send those updated scripts on to the WebCell.

Unfortunately, this would mean a lot work to do on the simulator. The simulator was written in C++ so it could share the code for CellScript with the WebCell. But I really missed the very elegant and refined environment that came with programming in Microsoft’s C# programming language. I decided I wasn’t going to take it anymore.

I split the simulator in two: a module in C++ that carried the shared CellScript code, and a module in C# that handled the user interface through Windows. Once I found out how easy it was to get the two modules to talk to each other, I was kicking myself for not doing it this way in the first place. The split and translation of the UI from C++ to C# took about a week.

Once the new simulator was working the same as before the split, I started the job of adding FTP. I created a “File Manager” similar to a stripped-down Windows Explorer. But it tracked both script files on the PC used for the simulator, and files on the WebCell using FTP. It then presented them in an integrated list showing what files were different between the two. The finishing touch was that it would monitor when changes were made to simulator script files, and could automatically copy them to the WebCell immediately.