Newbie question

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Hi,

On Thu, Jul 29, 1999 at 11:19:42PM -0400, Russell Nelson wrote:
>  > I just have to ask.....
>  > 
>  > ># ttyR6 = servo controller
>  > ># ttyR7 = Bottle Rocket
>  > 
>  > What are these two? What does the servo do
> 
> It controls multiple hobby R/C servomotors.  Just send a packet of
> three characters consisting of "beginning of packet", "servo number",
> and "position".  I have two of them connected at right-angles.  I also 
> have a modified xeyes program which spits out a pair of those packets
> depending on the x,y position of the cursor.  I redirect the output to 
> /dev/ttyR6, and the top servo motor arm points at the cursor.

Interesting.  Completely useless, but *very* interesting (... building a
R/C controlled submarine right now :-) ) - is that servo controller
something "off the shelf", or built-yourself?

(On that topic: I've seen an interesting demo of the RT capabilities of 
RT/Linux on the last CeBIT - they control R/C servos by directly
connecting their control lines to the parallel port, and sending the
signals fast & precise enough from an RT task...)

> It's completely useless except that it makes me happy.

Which is more useful than many other things...!

>  > and what on earth is a 
>  > Bottle Rocket???!
> 
> It drives the X-10.com Firecracker product.  That's a 2.4Ghz
> transmitter driven from an RS-232 port.  There's an X-10
> receiver-cum-appliance-module as well.  Bottle Rocket is the Linux
> software that drives it.  Could be very useful for dropping power on a
> modem -- another reason to use external modems.  One Firecracker can
> control any House/Module code -- that's over 200 devices.

Interesting, I think I'll have to take a very close look at this...

... I always wanted to remote control all my household!

[NB: while in theory, this is pretty much off-topic for the mgetty list, I
enjoy the topic... :-) ]

gert
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Gert Doering - Munich, Germany                             gert@greenie.muc.de
fax: +49-89-35655025                        gert.doering@physik.tu-muenchen.de