User:Lum Pfohl/LSL Goodies/HI-WA Occupancy Counter System

Help Island/Welcome Area Occupancy Counter System - Overview

Background

This is a system of scripts, sensors and servers designed to sense, collect, report and disseminate information on the occupancy levels of Orientation Islands, Help Islands, Welcome Areas and Infohubs. What it boils down to is a single prim HUD attachment on a Second Life Mentor's display.

When a Mentor clicks the HUD and requests an update from the server to display, there are a lot of things that happen in the background. Hopefully this documentation will illustrate what goes on behind the scenes, and how big this system actually is.

Discussion

I need to discuss each part in sections.

Links to Code

Scripters might be interested in the listing to my code. Yes, you can balk at it and criticize it and say that you can come up with something better. Please do; but it is not easy to come up with something from nothing and do it right the very first time. The fact is, that I have picked a convention and an architecture and stuck with it as I built the system. Every element of within the system conforms to the Requirements Documentation - which spells out what the system must do.

The programming that I have done is a culmination of everything I've taught myself in the past 1.5 years. I've scripted my very own line of Networked Vendors which use email and use notecards for configurations. I've created temp-rezzers for my displays which prove useful in rezzing sensors. I've worked with rotations and translations through creating temp-rezzing pendulums for grandfather clocks, which prove useful in pointing and focusing a sensor to a particular area in a sim. I've created a typing keyboard which works in no-script regions -- useful for making HUDS work in no script regions too! Many techniques I use also come from my Second Life Trivia page where I've personally observed certain things and documented them.

Here are the direct links to the LSL code.