In Blend 3 how do I design a user interface for external hardware running in real time?

Question

How do I design a user interface for external hardware which is running in real time?

Is this possible with Blend 3? I need to design a two way interface for a piece of external hardware and it would be great if I could twiddle it's knobs while designing as opposed to continually building, running, trying etc. The GUI is a lot more involved than just mimicking the knob positions and would probably need extensive use of converters and multiple binding.

Would I need to build two projects? One, to interface with the hardware and keep an image of the knob positions as dependency properties. This could, perhaps, be running while designing. Is that doable? Or is there a better way?

Using C# Visual Studio 2008 Express and Expression Blend 3.

There is a button labeled "Add live data source".

Thanks

Answer 1

When done carefully, you can separate the presentation from the model of data that you work with. Is it possible to "mock" up the data that you'll be operating on for your design sessions and then plug in the different models for your real time once you're acquiring the data?

One of the developers I work with not only mocked his model of the data but wrote tight loops on background threads to modify values so he could "fake" what his real UI would look like.

Not sure if that answers your question but it might get you thinking along the right path.