Awarenia – Interactive Systems III

In “Interactive Systems III” we realized a design project of our choice completely from the conception to the implementation. Our team developed “Awarenia”, a system to quickly and easily publish and share devices and resources in a network.

Project

Our aim was the development of a system with which the devices attached to a computer and the contained resources could remotely be “plugged” into other computers to use them as if they were locally present there. The most important factor of our project was user-friendliness – remotely “plugging in” devices was to be as easy as plugging them in locally via USB. Therefore it should also be displayed clearly which devices are available at which computer in the local network. The “owner” of a device had to have complete control over who might use the it and who not and had to always be able to recognize easily who was using it at the moment.

Concept

Main element of Awarenia is a user interface in which each computer in the local network is represented by a circular object. The own computer is also represented by such an object. To make them easily distinguishable, for different computers different colours are used. Each object consists of multiple nested circles. The innermost circle contains the name of the machine and an icon in the corresponding colour. In the surrounding circle icons for all devices of this machine that can be plugged in remotely are arranged. For all computers except the own one only devices that can be plugged in by the local computer are displayed. The outermost circle contains icons for the devices of other machines that are plugged in at the corresponding computer. These icons are displayed in the colours of the respective machines.

When a computer or device is clicked, various settings are possible, e.g. who can plug in the respective device. For this two modes are possible: General allowance, except for specific machines, or allowance for specific machines only. Other settings include whether the “owner” of a device is asked when another user wants to plug it in and device specific settings. There is also the possibility to create multiple profiles with different configurations for a local device that appear as distinct devices to other computers.

Screenshots

Realization

For the realization of the concepts, JavaFX was used for the front-end and Java for the back-end. For communication, a custom TCP-based protocol is used. The implemented application automatically recognizes (using Avahi) other computers in the local network running Awarenia. It’s possible to enable sharing of local devices for other computers using the interface developed by our team. If this is done, they automatically appear on the Awarenia interface running on the respective machines and can be “attached” there (depending on the settings only if the “owner” of the device approves it again), but attaching the devices is only simulated. The actual attaching of the devices has not been implemented yet.

Download/Usage

Download and usage information and license hopefully coming soon.