Im working on a school project at SELU with three other people. We are interested in writing a program for windows that gives the user an easy to use GUI to synchronize their Christmas lights. I know there is currently software out their but we intend to produce a product of our own.
Can I make a case for *not* doing this?
...
While I understand what you're shooting for -- a fun project to learn more about programming -- the world now has at least two Windows-based applications that do this across a variety of controller platforms (one is commercial, one is free -- not open source, just freely distributed).
What the world doesn't have is the same type of application on another operating system. The freely distributed application -- Vixen -- was developed under .NET and those underpinnings mean that it will never be ported to another OS. You can't run it under WINE or any WINE-like environment on Linux.
There are a number of us who support Windows only because we want to do Christmas lights. I bet we would be willing to help out a college-age crew if it were developed for a Linux or (better yet) Macintosh platform. I can't speak for everybody, but if your professor would be willing to contact me, I'd loan you a controller so that you wouldn't have to build much hardware. We could probably drum up a spare DMX dongle for you as well.
But for another Windows app? I'd be less motivated.
Nonetheless, best o' luck.
\dmc
