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Subject: 
Re: RCX & RIS, a fading glory?
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.robotics
Date: 
Mon, 3 Feb 2003 18:51:02 GMT
Viewed: 
714 times
  
I think an ability to retain as much "Lego" infrastructure as possible is to
be desired. Mixing and matching alien non Lego wires and connectors starts
to depart the basic simplicity of polarity independence and Lego mechical
compatibility which I think is one of the clever parts of the whole
Mindstorms/RCX scheme.

I don't think that an industry standard bus is of vital importance since
there are so few industry standard bus compatible devices which would be of
real value in a Lego/Technic creation.

I think the idea of superimposing a data stream on top of the power as
conducted by today's Lego 9v wires is a worthwhile target and I have been
actively researching this idea for a while. There are numerous off the shelf
systems which do this today including power line (AC) remote controls and
network schemes. This technology is easily co-opted for use at 9v DC.

What is not so easy is that at present, the parts available for use in such
a scheme have no real reason to be highly miniaturized. If one of the goals
would be to support the communication interface in a sensor built into a 2x4
brick, then a lot of work needs doing. There is about 1/2 square inch of
board space in a 2x4 brick which of course can be expanded to 1 square inch
by using both sides. I am trying to find a way to fit both the sensor
electronics and a communications subsystem into this amount of space and I
can assure you it isn't easy. If anyone knows of a single chip, preferably
less than 6x6 mm which can transceive** digital data at a respectable data
rate (>100kbps?) with a minimum of external parts (Rs, Cs, Ls etc), please
let me know!

JB


** By transceive, I mean bidirectional transport by means of a subcarrier or
other signalling technique of digital data. The scheme must permit an easy
seperation of signalling and power supply energy.


In lugnet.robotics, Kyle McDonald writes:
a compromise
computer would connect to a 'bus' or communications interace
..which could be a simple as the 2 wires we use today, and which
possibly could carry both power and data ..



Message has 1 Reply:
  Re: RCX & RIS, a fading glory?
 
(...) I aggree which is why I hoped someone could figure out a way to reuse the 2x2 brick connector, and the 2 wire scheme. If it needed to be more wires (and LEGO was doing it) I suppose they could make a 4 wire keyed connector that onely went on (...) (22 years ago, 4-Feb-03, to lugnet.robotics)

Message is in Reply To:
  Re: RCX & RIS, a fading glory?
 
(...) While did take some EE courses in college I don't claim to have enough background in that area to comment on which bus could be used. I made that statement mainly based on my suspicion that something like DCC could be made to work. 2 Wires (...) (22 years ago, 3-Feb-03, to lugnet.robotics)

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