Exportable FOCE
Software Requirements
27 Oct 2011

Salamy, Herlien, Kecy, Maughan, Headley

Why we're doing this
We have been very successful in enabling MBARI researchers to study OA with unique FOCE technology.

We have been working on FOCE since before everyone else recognized how important it is to do FACE-like experiments in the ocean. We are now in the right place at the right time: the community wants to do this and we have a huge jump start on the right tool for the job. Meanwhile, the FOCE effort at MBARI is in the final stretch.

If we want our investment in FOCE to continue to have impact, we need to make the FOCE concept accessible to the potential users who are lining up to see what FOCE can do. 

If we think about the users and their applications as we do our shallow FOCE design, we may be able to make a FOCE that community can more easily adopt.

Today's Goals:

- Capture key functional and design requirements (software focus, others OK)
- What FOCE must do (not how)

- Build common list of system/software functional blocks
- What are important boundaries for modularity
- What can we potentially make simpler

- Describe key assumptions about users and applications

Notes:

Big Questions: 
Is the basic FOCE a stand-alone/set-and-forget tool, or do we assume that people will interact with it to keep it running?

Does the basic FOCE system include a GUI and/or other visualization and utility software? The sense is that these are part of the system (in some form are other).

Is there a possible to have a thrusterless FOCE?

What is the core instrument suite? (number, type)