Blood Culture System Software Extension

Photo from Pixabay is licensed under CC0

The primary objective of FX Software Extension was to port existing Zinc-based software used on a fully automated medical blood culture system from VxWorks to Windows 7 platform. As part of the project, FX Hardware Simulator environment was utilized to emulate FX instrument hardware. In order to accomplish the task, we modified and adjusted Zinc libraries for Win7 environment.

As well, we added some new features to the FX. Specifically, we wanted to offer multi-language support, including the Chinese and Japanese languages, on-screen keyboard and debug console, changing drivers for barcode scanner, communication ports, reports and dynamic screen sizing. All these were added on as new features.

How we did it:

We divided the project development into two phases: Scope I and Scope II.

Scope I: For the first phase, we did Proof-of-concept porting, identification of key-risk factors, and then the actual porting by using simulated hardware and features development. This was followed by Checklists-based testing, and testing of FTDI drivers. This took three of our engineers five months to complete.

Scope II: Here we concentrated on changing the FX hardware simulation and requirements gathering and formulization for mobile connectivity features.

Then we worked on Implementation and Testing in a real hardware environment. This took three of our engineers on the team 6 months to complete.

As well, Scope II of the project focused on further updates made to the FX software, such as porting to smaller capacity FX 40 instrument hardware and updating FX Hardware simulator for FX 40 hardware. It also included mobile connectivity i.e. providing capabilities to connect to FX blood culture system using Android phones and tablets.

Tools and Technologies used in the process:

Zinc

C++

XML

Window 7 Embedded

Android

Eclipse

If you are interested in talking to our development team about a concept you would like to create or a project you are currently working on, get in touch with us at contactus@psa-software.com