Welcome to Redfish Labs
This site is a place where the Redfish team can store, work on, and distribute information and resources associated with our more cutting-edge efforts. The technology presented here may not be ready for general release, but we're happy to share our work-in-progress with our interested customers, and provide early access to our more adventurous testers.
iDVM Web Bluetooth
We're proud of our iDVM2 iOS and Android apps, and think they're great at meeting the general needs of many different users of our iDVM multimeters. But we also know that the mobile apps can't meet all of the particular software requirements of our various users. Specifically, the mobile apps can't run on several platforms, such as desktop and laptop PCs, and many users would like to collect measurements in a business-specific format that our general record-to-database mechanism doesn't allow.
To address these issues, we're implementing the ability for iDVM meters to communicate over Web Bluetooth. Web Bluetooth is a technology that Google is building into the Chrome browser that will enable the browser, and the pages it loads, to communicate over Bluetooth to hardware devices. This means that you can write your own web pages or web apps, incorporating your own business logic, and include multimeter measurements and calculations right into the logic. You can also write your own multimeter UI and run it on any platform that can run the latest version of Chrome, including Mac, Linux, Chrome-OS or Android.
There will soon be a separate page of this site dedicated to iDVM Web Bluetooth with detailed instructions and links to resources, but for now if you want to try it out you can try loading this example form into an updated version of Chrome running on Mac, Linux, Android or Chrome-OS.
iOS HTML Panels
Many customers have told us that they wished they could add custom data entry forms to our mobile apps, so that they could capture measurements from their meters, but also include their own business logic or workflows. We obviously can't include specific forms for each such use case, however, in a general-purpose app like iDVM2.
The non-iOS solution to this problem, as mentioned above, is the iDVM Web Bluetooth mechanism we're implementing for the Chrome web browser. However, due to browser limitations on the iOS platform, it is unlikely that Google will ever provide Web Bluetooth functionality in Chrome on iOS.
As a solution on iOS, then, we're considering adding another panel to the iDVM2 iOS app that can contain user-supplied HTML, CSS and Javascript, and would also receive meter measurement and state-change notifications from the main app. The idea is similar to the iDVM Web Bluetooth idea, since the panel is just a browser window within the app, but the delivery of measurements happens in a slightly different manner.
We've implemented a demonstration of the “HTML Panel” idea in the current version of the iDVM2 beta release, available through the TestFlight program. If you're interested in trying this out, please let us know and we'll tell you how to participate in TestFlight and get the beta app.
iDVM Bluetooth Specification
We encourage developers to add support for the iDVM multimeter to their apps. The iDVM multimeter is a standard Bluetooth-LE device that publishes its own custom Measurement Profile, as well as standard Device Information and Battery Profiles. If you are used to writing apps that communicate with Bluetooth-LE hardware, the iDVM Bluetooth-LE Specification document should give you all the information you need to write your own meter interface.
iOS App Beta Testing
We are always looking for current iDVM2 users that are willing to act as beta testers for new versions of the iOS app. We don't ask for any formal commitments or reporting requirements, we just ask that you try out the app and report any problems or bugs you encounter. Plus, we always like to get suggestions and feedback on new features before they are released to the App Store.
We conduct our beta tests through Apple's TestFlight program, which requires that you have a valid iTunes account and an iOS device running iOS 8 or later. Participation will require you to install the TestFlight app on your device (if you haven't already), which will notify you of updates to the beta app as we release them. If you'd like to become an iDVM beta tester, just send us a note along with the email address you use with iTunes to support@redfishinstruments.com and we'll be happy to add you to the team.
Please note that running beta versions of any app, including iDVM2, can lead to crashes, unexpected behavior, and general frustration. We strongly recommend that if you have a second iPhone or iPad from the one you normally use with your meter, you use that second device to run the beta apps. In rare cases a problem in a beta app can cause the loss of your iDVM data sets (meter recordings), so it's a good idea to make sure any important data in your iDVM2 app has been exported off-device before running a beta. Also, we will occasionally distribute meter firmware updates through beta app releases, and all beta firmware images have some (small) risk of disabling your meter. If you ever think a beta firmware has disabled your meter, just let us know and we'll be happy to send you a replacement.
Android App Beta Testing
As with our iOS app beta program, we are always looking for testers for the beta releases of the iDVM2 Android app. The Android beta releases are public and anyone can sign up to receive the betas and become a tester. Just go to https://play.google.com/apps/testing/com.redfishinstruments.idvm2 on your Android device and you can sign up to be a tester.
As with the iOS beta, we don't ask anything of our beta testers other than they report bugs and submit feedback when they can. Also, all the same warnings about running a beta version of the app apply: use a second device if possible, export any important data, and let us know if you have any problems with a beta meter firmware.
Support or Contact
Any questions or problems? Just contact us and we’ll be happy to help if we can.