Hey all! First of all, I'd just like to apologize to anyone who I may iritate if this post is in the wrong category. It's a fairly general question, so it's hard to find even the correct forum, much less category, to ask it under.
Before I ask the question, I should explain some things. A little while ago, I had an idea for a project I wanted to try. It would involve a video terminal that could be placed in the room of a patient with alzheimer's disease. Through past experience in nursing homes, I've seen some late-stage patients in some pretty fear-stricken states -- terrified because they have no idea where they are. Since the staff can't possibly be expected to follow these people around, providing the constant reassurance that would calm them, they are reduced to living a life filled with bouts of constant fear and anxiety.
Having talked with some staff at local nursing homes, I've been told that many Alzheimer's patients are aware enough of their surroundings to take notice of an on-sceen message. With this in mind, I was thinking it would be nice if it were possible to have a video console which would stay permanently in their room and work something like this:
The screen would display a custom text message from the family when not activited (Something like "Dear Ann, If you are confused about where you are, press this button"), and below the screen would be a big and obvious e-Stop button that could be pressed. On pressing, a video message, pre-recorded by the family, would be played full-screen. It would just be a simple loving message, with maybe an explanation and encouragement, and a reminder that the family would be in to visit soon. After the video, the original message would reappear, and the option to push the button again would be available for whenever the patient again became anxious or forgot where they were.
All that would be accessible to the patient would be the button, but on access with a phyical key (in the family's or nursing home's possession), a door in the display could be openned so that the family could access the computer controls and remove the webcam for recording.
When I was trying to figure out how all of this would work, I was intending to teach myself the basics of a programming language over the summer. I am still completely dedicated to making this work, so I am not asking for any free handouts, but I am at a loss as to which language is most appropriate for my needs. The key requirements would be the ability to support a full-screen program, recording and playback at decent resolution (640x480 and 30fps), and ability to easily interface through the serial or parallel port with a bias switch e-stop button.
And I realize that I'm pretty ignorant at the moment, so any help would be greatly appreciated. I have no illusions that learning is going to be easy, but I'm willing to put in the time -- I'd just rather not waste effort learning a language that won't suite my project very well. I'm no computer science major, but I have been in the habit of self-teaching (PC-wise) since I first taught myself HTML in grade 8. I've taugh myself flash, 3dsmax, adobe premiere, photoshop, css, basic, after effects... I know, I know, hardly anything compared to real programming languages, but I'm just saying that I'm used to doing this type of thing on my own. Jack of all trades, though master of none, I suppose...
So again, the final question is this: Being as objective as possible (since I realize that I'm on a Java forum!), which programming language would be best suited to tackle this project?
Thanks a bunch people! I really appreciate it!!! :)
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