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Subject: 
Re: Two Usb towers
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.robotics
Date: 
Wed, 17 Aug 2005 04:47:27 GMT
Original-From: 
dan miller <danbmil99@yahoo.com{stopspam}>
Viewed: 
1311 times
  
Just as a point of reference --

My latest creation has 7 motors, requiring 3 RCX's.  All the high-level
logic is written in Python and runs on my laptop.  I communicate with the
bricks through a single usb tower, using simple file I/O.  The open call
looks like this:

irHnd = CreateFile("\\\\.\\legotower1", GENERIC_READ|GENERIC_WRITE, 0, None,
OPEN_EXISTING, 0, None)

The RCX's run BrickOS.  I don't use LNP, I rolled my own I/O communication
scheme.  It works fine as long as there is a clear line of sight between
tower & CPU's, and there isn't too much ambient light (stray light causes
spurious bytes, which LNP fixes but I don't).

I'm willing to share my code if anyone is interested - dbm


--- "Steve Lane"@yahoo.com, UNEXPECTED_DATA_AFTER_ADDRESS@.SYNTAX-ERROR.
wrote:

In lugnet.robotics, Steve Hassenplug wrote:


When you use VB, I assume you have a function something like this to • find & open the
port:

--
Public Function FindTower()
    On Error GoTo FindError
    Dim strPort As String
    Set Me.LEGOcom = New LEGOVPBrickLib.VPBrick
    Me.LEGOcom.FindPort strPort
    Me.LEGOcom.Open strPort
    Me.LEGOcom.Monitor True
    Exit Function
FindError:
    If Err.Number = -520093436 Then
        MsgBox "Tower not found"
    Else
        MsgBox "Error (" & Err.Number & ") " & Err.Description
    End If

End Function
--

I decided not to start work on this problem until my second Usb tower
arrived.
It came a few days ago and now I've found the time to work on it, but I've
hit
another problem.

I haven't got any code like that above, because (as I've only just
realised) I'm
not using Ghost.dll but Phantom instead, which is the usb version of
Spirit.ocx.
It's been that long since I added it to my program that I'd completely
forgotten
I'd done it. The reason I did it was because it was so much simpler to use
Phantom because I already understood Spirit.ocx, rather than learn how to
use
Ghost as well.

So now it turns out I can't use Phantom in my attempts to control two usb
towers
as it only supports one. I've just been reading some Ghost documentation
and it
seems to work in a completely different way to Spirit.ocx. It doesn't even
support the functions I need, namely Poll() and Setvar(). It doesn't even
seem
to have equivalents and seems ridiculously complicated.

I've noticed Spirit and Ghost are rarely mentioned here, let alone
compared. I'm
beginning to see why, but I like Spirit because of it's simplicity
(although I
did have a few problems early on).

If I can't replicate Spirit's functionality with Ghost than I'll have to
revert
to the rechargeable solution, which I'm very close to deciding to do at
this
point. If the solution exceeds a certain level of difficulty to solve then
it
won't be worth it compared with just changing batteries and I'll take that
course instead.

Steve





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Message is in Reply To:
  Re: Two Usb towers
 
(...) I decided not to start work on this problem until my second Usb tower arrived. It came a few days ago and now I've found the time to work on it, but I've hit another problem. I haven't got any code like that above, because (as I've only just (...) (19 years ago, 15-Aug-05, to lugnet.robotics)

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