Gilderflukeco old Smart Brick Manual Manuel d'utilisateur télécharger pdf (Page 37)

- Smart Brick System Commands -

The MACs Smart Brick System can be controlled by simple switch closures to start and stop playback

or cycling, randomly select shows, and perform a variety of functions. In addition to this method of con-

trolling it, you can talk to any combination of up to 256 Smart Brick Systems and Digital Audio Repeaters

at one time through a serial data line from your computer, terminal, or control system.

This same serial port must be used to configure the features of any Smart Brick System, and is used

by the system when it needs to talk to a LaserDisk player or any other serially controlled device. The latter

limits the use of the serial port to those systems which are not controlling LaserDisk players.

All commands sent to the MACs Smart Brick System through its serial interface take the following for-

mat. All characters are sent in ASCII. All numeric values are sent in HEXadecimal (HEX for short), and

consist of one or more ASCII characters (0-9, A through F). The case (as in upper and lower) of all input is

important. A lower case 'a' signifies a command, while an 'A' is a numeric value. If the Smart Brick System

receives another command while it is waiting for additional input needed to complete the previous com-

mand, it will abandon the previous command and start working on the new one.

In the following documentation any input you will send to the audio system is shown in outline. The

response to a command is shown in italics.

If the Smart Brick System is in a mode where you expect to receive some response from it (generally

in one of the echo modes), you must wait to receive all of the characters you are expecting before

sending the system a new command. The reason for this is that you are actually talking to up to 256 mi-

croprocessors at a time, and if you issue a command which gives a response from one Brick Brain, and

then a command which gives a response from a second Brick Brain before the first has finished, then the

two may try and output data at the same time. This won't cause any damage, but may result in garbled

data at the receiver.

It is also possible to overload the Smart Brick System with too many commands through the serial

port. You don't want to take too much time away from the Brick Brain to service the serial port.

To communicate with the Smart Brick System through the serial port, you can use just about any

computer or terminal which has a serial port on it. Most modern computer designs, like the Apple

Macintosh, come with serial ports which are directly compatible with the RS-422 / RS-485 signal levels

the Smart Brick System wants to see. These signal levels are close enough to be used with the RS-232 sig-

nal levels found on most old-fashioned computers (like IBMs and compatibles) with only a simple adapter

cable, so long as the wire isn't too long and you donÕt have too many devices on the same line. To gain

the full advantage of the RS-422 / RS-485 signal levels you will need to use a signal level adapter.

If you are using a computer as a terminal you will need to run a modem or terminal emulation pro-

gram. Virtually any one should work. These will send everything you type on the keyboard out the serial

port on your computer while printing on the screen anything which comes in from the Brick Brain

through the serial port. A modem program will usually have the advantage over a terminal emulation

program in that it will allow you to save data to your computer's disk drives and then send it back to the

audio system at a later date. The Smart Brick System uses no screen control codes or ESCape se-

quences, so it will work on any machine with a 80 column by 24 line display. Machines with other display

formats will also work, but may not look so neat on the screen.

When configuring your modem program, you should set it for 9600 baud, 8 data bits, one stop bit,

and no parity. Higher or lower baud rates can be used if you configure the Brick BrainÕs serial port to run

at a different speed. You should set your program not to insert an extra LineFeed (LF) character after

each Carriage Return (CR) it receives. If you are going to be downloading configuration strings to the

system (command ÔsÕ), you will also need to tell the modem program to put a slight delay between each

character sent in order to not over run the Brick BrainÕs incoming data buffer.

GILDERFLUKE & C

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Gilderflukeco old Smart Brick Manual Manuel d'utilisateur Page 37

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