App blueprint, advice please!

[Patrick <optomatic rogers com>]

Thanks Murray!, Dank U Neils, Grazie Nicola! Thanks Michael!

Glom, Comedi, NTD and Michaels tips are all great pieces to the puzzle. 
I really appreciate your feedback. If someone is moderating this list 
please let me know if I have traveled to far away from GTK but I was 
just wondering about a few things:

There is an intense need for this in labs. My business is still a bit 
unstable but I have proven to myself that I can sell things and that I 
can recognize markets.

We could write an open source App and still provide for our families, 
there is money in this. We would be solving a huge set of problems 
afflicting scientists everywhere. I am confident that I would have no 
trouble finding sponsors or customers.

I am not sure which open source strategy would be best, having an open 
download link like Ubuntu or charging for each copy like Redhat.

I am able to break down the biggest barrier to entry for this project 
and that is the cost of the actual equipment and the native software to 
run it, which would set someone else back tens or even hundreds of 
thousands.

I would like to get others involved but I am not sure what would be the 
best way to offer compensation.

All of the OEM vendors control each others equipment so I don't see how 
they would be in a position to sue but there is some liability potential 
here and even a frivolous lawsuit could hurt.

I am not concerned about myself. I have done some research and I don't 
see how anyone could take legal action if I did not mention their 
company names. I plan on explaining the devices that can be controlled 
visually with drawings and even in event that something did happen I can 
structure the organization to reduce liability.

However perhaps it would be best to pay others on a bounty basis and 
keep them clear of all of this rather then include them in the credits 
of the project. Do you think this could work?

With so many aspects to this does anyone think that using Bash would be 
useful? For example if we designed all the  smaller programs to read and 
write from/to standard input and output, they could be interlinked with 
other Bash commands such as ftp, netcat, ssh, mailx and so on..

Lets say a customer had a detector and a pump to pump a sample through 
it. We could write a Bash script that works something like this:

-icon launches Bash script
-sends variable " 2" to pump command to pump 2 ml per minute
-pump command sends signal to serial port or GPIB bus, etc
-bash sends variable "230" to set the detector to wavelength 230 nm
-bash autozeros detector
-launches plot command
-after that launches data process command
-then launches database storage command
- emails whoever, turns your coffee maker on or whatever....etc..etc

It's a terrible over simplification but hopefully illustrates the idea.

I only have a few hundred dollars to put towards this now but hopefully 
by the later half of 2008 it will be a few thousand. Please feedback 
with any thoughts you might have on this whole process. Thanks-Patrick