Radiation data is collected from an Aware Electronics Corp. radiation monitor by a remote PC running our 32 bit windows program Aw-Radw. As often as desired the remote Aw-Radw triggers an Aware Electronics utility program (time-ftp.exe) which converts Aw-Radw's ASCII output data to a binary format with a 64 bit time-code (the number of 0.1 microseconds since January 1st 1601, good to past year 30,000) and a floating point double radiation value. (The double type contains 64 bits: 1 for sign, 11 for the exponent, and 52 for the mantissa. Its range is +/–1.7E308 with at least 15 digits of precision). Time-ftp.exe also calculates a 16 bit CRC (cyclic redundancy check) for each line of data. (CRC is much more accurate as compared to a checksum). Time-ftp.exe then generates a unique name for the file based on Coordinated Universal Time and the name of the remote PC's ASCII filename. Next it sends the file to an internet server using FTP. The remote PC only sends data out to the internet i.e. it does not need to receive data from the internet.
As often as desired a base PC looping batch file uses our utilities ftp-get.exe, join-f.exe and w-sleep.exe to get the data from the internet server, sort it, check each line's CRC and if OK converts the line back to ASCII data (with any ASCII time code desired) and then adds the stream to a local file. Next a graph is generated from the file and it is sent to a web server using FTP. In this graph's case the internet server used for the transport of data is the same that hosts Aware's website. FTP append/restore is not needed.
If any leg of the data transport is down, the data is buffered i.e. if the connection between the remote PC and the internet is down, data is buffered on the remote PC. If the connection between the internet and the base PC is down, data is buffered on the internet server. If for any reason the remote PC or the base PC reboots, the software is automatically reloaded and picks up where it left off.
