Subject: From: Date:

can somebody in this group answer this? Steve Letkeman Fri, 12 Jan 2001 09:29:47 -0800

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Hi All,  I do not currently use ECS (although one of
these days when I have some time...) but I do lurk
on this mailing list because of the good ideas and 
the good advice and I thought somebody here might
be able to help me out.
   I'm designing a custom lighting system for a customer
that allows a number of dimming boards to be located
over a very large private yacht and they're all networked
together and you can send commands for different moods
etc.  I want to be able to add the capability to use some
sort of standard programmable LCD display user interface
to inject commands into the serial port of any of the boards.
Currently, you can program any of the nodes by plugging
into the serial port and my communication software provides
the proper packet structure including a 16 CRC checksum.
Here's the question:  Do these off the shelf LCD controllers
allow you to program them to send a string of serial characters
to control something?  If yes, do they allow any sort of
programming in order to generate a CRC in the packet,
or do I need to simplify my protocol to just accept a few
byte command for each device I want to control?
(I have seen posts concerning the use of this type of device
with ECS so I assume there is some expertise here)

Any advice would be appreciated,
Steve

Zanthic Technologies Inc. located at www.zanthic.com
     Your Controller Area Networking Experts!
Check out our latest project, a 4 wheel drive, rolling,
walking, hydraulic vehicle completely controlled by CAN
    CAN-4-USB and CAN-4-EPP interfaces sold here

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