WPF-Based Interface for Irritrol
Toro and a sister company, Irritrol, have designed a system for irrigation and lighting of residential and commercial properties where multiple watering and lighting zones can be controlled from one application on the user's PC.
Toro was actively looking for ways of enhancing the application to better reflect visual and system features of the Windows operating system. The application our team developed in response to this request is called PC Control.
The Irritrol system is comprised of a Controller that is mounted on location, a USB Remote, and the PC Control software. Each component requires a synchronized PIN number to ensure communication between all three components.
The areas of improvement that Toro is looking to explore in the existing software are the following. The interface is not very user friendly, the application runs slowly and communication with the remote is unreliable, at best.
The new application is targeted specifically for Windows, both XP and Vista. The new application will take advantage of graphical tools newly available with Windows Vista. To improve communication with the remote, the software will directly interact with the operating system.
The new software is developed using Microsoft's .NET Framework, and is written in C#. The user interface is created using Windows Presentation Foundation, with Microsoft Expression Blend facilitating the development process.
Daniel Fiordalis, Tom Castellani, Matt Grabow, Stephanie Cook
