SensorDeck

A WPF telemetry dashboard that connects to a simulated hardware device over TCP, streams live sensor readings (temperature, voltage, vibration), plots them in real time, and sends control commands back.

Built to demonstrate: WPF/MVVM, async/await I/O, a Producer/Consumer pipeline (System.Threading.Channels), a TCP communication protocol, and xUnit unit + integration testing.

Projects

• src/SensorDeck.Core — shared contracts: TelemetryFrame, DeviceCommand, JSON-line (de)serialization, and the async DeviceConnection TCP wrapper.
• src/DeviceSimulator — console app standing in for the real hardware. Listens on TCP port 5050, emits a TelemetryFrame as a JSON line every ~100ms, and reacts to inbound DeviceCommands (toggle heater, set sample rate).
• src/SensorDeck.Wpf — the dashboard. MVVM (MainViewModel via CommunityToolkit.Mvvm), a Producer/Consumer Channel<TelemetryFrame> bridging the socket-read task and the UI thread, and a live-scrolling LiveCharts2 temperature chart.
• tests/SensorDeck.Core.Tests — xUnit: frame/command serializer round-trip and malformed-input handling, plus an integration test that spins up TcpTelemetryServer in-process and asserts frames flow through a real DeviceConnection.
• tests/SensorDeck.Wpf.Tests — xUnit: MainViewModel PropertyChanged notifications and command CanExecute gating on connection state.

Running it

dotnet run --project src/DeviceSimulator
dotnet run --project src/SensorDeck.Wpf

Click Connect in the WPF window. You should see the three live readouts update, the temperature chart scroll, and the simulator log heater/sample-rate changes when you use the controls at the bottom of the window.

Testing

dotnet test

Swapping in real hardware

DeviceSimulator stands in for a networked device today. Because the wire protocol (newline-delimited JSON over TCP) and the shared SensorDeck.Core contracts are decoupled from the simulator's implementation, a real device only needs to speak the same JSON-line protocol — or DeviceConnection could be swapped for a System.IO.Ports-based serial transport for UART-connected hardware without touching the ViewModel or UI.