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My mate Doug's solution:

Look, Don't be so f"@#$%g traumatic over this. Solution is as follows:

CORBA III Orb, Servers written in C++, GUI's  in VB/DELPHI with CORBA/COM
fast bridging technology. Use Oracle V8 DB, will need orb with event
service.

Probably Linux or Solaris O/S

Rational Rose CASE Tool, UML diagramming notation, DSDM/ODP methodology and
some systematic Project Management method.

Simple, end of chat.

This sounds like it could be generalized pretty well by using CORBA events. For those who know even less than I, here's CORBA events in a nutshell : - an object may be a PRODUCER or a CONSUMER of an event - the event transfer may be instigated by a producer (PUSH) or by a consumer (PULL)

The event service means a process can listen for any  number of events and
implement handlers for those events as and when required.
As far as I can tell this is a fairly simple setup where you have hardware
toys (Magnets, etc...) which need to raise events (Help I'm on fire, Oooh
I've come over all quenched.......) and to respond to commands and/or other
events

This sort of stuff is exactlty what hardware device handlers need.
Presumably all your sexy kit will fire off events regularly and you will
require software handlers to - well, to handle those events. Polling seems
daft, 1970's solution to the problem.