Help EduGeek develop a Surface 2.0 application

[Dos_Box]

If you visited the EduGeek stand at BETT last week you probably couldn't help but see the stand opposite run by Xface (Welcome to Xface). Xface are a company who specialise in developing applications for the Microsoft Surface platform (Welcome to Surface), and if you got to play with it you saw just how, and no other words can fit as well as 'funky', it is. After several chats with them we fielded the idea of them bringing a table to the EduGeek conf in May/June (dates tbc) to show off and perhaps do a session on. They then suggested we come up with an idea for an application that would be of benefit to us in our profession to make it more relevant and after a little thought we came up with the idea of some kind of network mapping/monitoring application. I'll lay out the current ideas we have below, but we shall need you to field any ideas that you would like to see in this. Please bear in mind that they will only have 2 months of coding time to do this in, so we need to get this started as soon as possible.

 

So currently we have this feature list/requirements:

 

 

 

• Must be able to scan a given IP range(s) for all computers/devices and where possible know what they are and allocate a given icon. It must also have the ability to use/traverse VLANs where necessary.
  
• Detected hardware must be shown with IP address, NETBIOS name (where applicable) and be able to utilise SNMP.
  
• Devices should be zoomable by touching the icon to reveal more data such as can be gathered via SNMP and other available methods.
  
• Network links and back hauls can be added manually in a logical way, and not in the way some network mapping software does it i.e. draws a picture of a cloud and has everything hanging off that.
  
• There should be a basic testing menu to allow you to run diagnostic commands against network kit such as ping, tracert etc.
  
• Maps/floor plans may be added and devices located on these and then 'locked' to the map. These maps will then be zoomable so that you could, for example, have an entire campus on one screen with all devices shown, but then have the ability to zoom into a single classroom/office and monitor computers, printers etc.
  

 

I also have a whole raft of other ideas, but I don't want to swamp them with mine if you can come up with some better ones, so please help out here and hopefully we should see this live at the conference and you can have a play with it.

Over to you

Edited January 30, 2012 by Dos_Box

[Dos_Box]

*BUMP*

I have to reply to Xface tomorrow with ideas, so anything you can add would be much appreciated.

[GrumbleDook]

I would look at something like a combination of showing NMAP information overlapping to a cad file of the school. Link the specific locations / nodes to the interfaces on the devices themselves, including other tools such as Nagios / Cacti.

[steve]

Perhaps some sort of energy monitoring - a database of energy usage for a particular item, then a ping to a piece of equipment. Then it could give a sort of heat map where the most energy is being used.

[tom_newton]

Nmap is almost certainly the place to start with this, given the cost, and the efficacy. W-o-L whould be easy enough to add, and makes a fun demo...

[featured_spectre]

@steve the energy consumption is not an easy one to do, as some PSU's don't get recognised by external software. As such you would need to write up code for almost every PSU on the market and as they keep coming out, its not going to be an easy task

[plexer]

Wlan monitoring showing device/people connected, link to cctv/access control system

 

Ben

[Dos_Box]

Thanks guys. This is really good info. Please bear in mind that Surface apps are coded (primarily AFAIK) in Windows Presentation Foundation and XNA so trying to bolt on random parts may be harder to do than 'normal' app development. What we want are features you would liek to see, but not anything that will take too long to do. Remember, this is for the conf, so development time is short.

[GREED]

+1 for CCTV link, the ability to patch into a camera and bring the feed onto the 'screen'