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Subject: 
RE: IR Transmitter
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.robotics
Date: 
Thu, 1 Jul 1999 09:51:49 GMT
Original-From: 
Barbour, David <David.Barbour@^nospam^siemens.ie>
Viewed: 
1141 times
  
I agree, it would be very useful if the PC could take direct control.
But hey, if the IR tower is just too lazy then send him to bed and
set ourselves the challenge of creating a new IR tower for direct
PC control - yes?!

I'm running my code from a Tecra 8000 latptop and a thought popped
into my head recently - wonder if I could use my IR port...

Anyway - it still surprises me how good the IR tower actually is - I've
never had a problem with it...

Proteus
-----Original Message-----
From: Chris Phillips [SMTP:chris.phillips.deathtospam@computerboards.com]
Sent: 30 June 1999 23:37
To: lego-robotics@crynwr.com
Subject: Re: IR Transmitter - where's the "off" switch?

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."
--
Did you check the web site first?: http://www.crynwr.com/lego-robotics
--
Did you check the web site first?: http://www.crynwr.com/lego-robotics



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