Subject:
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Re: IR Transmitter - where's the "off" switch?
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.robotics
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Date:
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Wed, 30 Jun 1999 22:37:27 GMT
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Viewed:
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924 times
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Brian H. Nielsen <70401.2635@compuserve.com> wrote in message ...
> I've read the messages about the IR Tower powering off and people
> trying to keep them ON, but I don't understand why you would want the IR
> Tower on all the time. It's main function is to download programs to
> the RCX brick, with additional use when using the Test panel. Why does
> it need to be on any other time? Is there another use I don't know
> about yet that involves realtime communication with a program running in
> the RCX?
The application where it is desirable to keep the tower turned on is when
you want one or more RCXes to be able to send messages to a program running
on the host computer. The computer must send out some data every 3 seconds
or else the tower will shut down, and it won't receive anything sent from an
RCX.
This is not an issue for most RIS users. You would have to be writing a
special application that would run on your PC to listen to the RCX this way.
The standard Lego software doesn't do this.
But there are many applications where this would be a cool thing to be
able to do. For example, imagine if your poor little RCX could use your
computer like a network file server. Whenever it wanted to, it could send
data to the PC to be stored in a file, or ask the computer to send back the
contents of a previously-written file. This would require that a server
application be running on the PC to handle these file requests. The server
would have to constantly be "talking" just so that it could keep on
"listening" for requests from the RCX. I don't know if you've ever noticed,
but it's a lot harder to hear with your mouth wide open.
Some folks over in the LegOS camp are trying to implement a network
protocol for the RCX to enable robots to send more detailed information
packets around than the one-byte messages supported by the RCX firmware. It
sounds like they're trying to figure out how the computer fits into this
network, but they've been running into some very tricky problems because the
tower has such a bad case of narcolepsy.
I hope this helps to answer your question without supplying "too much
information."
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: IR Transmitter - where's the "off" switch?
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| (...) tower is that automatically powers itself off after 2 or 3 seconds of use. (...) tower because it only "listens" to messages when it's powered on. I've read the messages about the IR Tower powering off and people trying to keep them ON, but I (...) (25 years ago, 30-Jun-99, to lugnet.robotics)
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