Subject: From: Date:

Re: [ECS] ACE Screenshots Dan Hoehnen Thu, 3 Sep 1998 13:38:40 -0400 (EDT)

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Dan, you've just about got it right.  But, I will clarify a few points...

On Thu, 3 Sep 1998, Dan Carrington wrote:

> Thanks for the pics Michael.  Very clean and simple to look at.  Nice
> tabs for different menus.  Just a refresher for me if you would.  Please
> correct me if I am wrong.  I am trying to get a better handle on the
> system you are running.
> 
> You are running touch screen laptops or screen only computers arround
> the house.  They are connected by a common serial line or ethernet.  

I have all my ace clients connect to the ace server via a tcp/ip network 
connection.  I think Michael does the same.  However, a client can also 
connect to the server over a serial port.  The serial port connection 
will still allow ecs to send commands to ace and for ace buttons to send 
commands to ecs.  But, the automatic item state status reporting is 
currently only sent over the network to all clients.  So, a client 
connected via a serial port would not get these item state updates.  You 
would have to send them yourself from code you write in your ecs.cfg file.

I could probably add the ability to send item state info over a serial 
port if necessary.

The network and serial communication is pretty flexible.  A command 
received on a client or server serial port can be forwarded to another 
serial port on either the client or server.  Or it can be forwarded to 
the server or another client over the network.  Likewise, a command 
received over the network can be forwarded to a client or server serial 
port.  

>You
> run Ace client over windows95 on the touchscreen computers with your
> button setups on them.

The ace client and server are 16 bit programs and so can run on Win 3.1, 
95 or NT (haven't tried it yet on 98).  Of course, if you are using ECSW 
then you must run the ace server on the same pc as ecsw, so it must be a 
Win 95 or NT pc.

My clients in my house run on 3.1, 95 and NT.  My server runs on the same 
pc as ECSW on a Win95 pc.

>  You run Ace server on the automation commputer
> running on windows95, which watches listens to ECS and the touchscreen
> computers.  ECS and ACE communicate in a windows environment with DDE
> commands.  ECS publishes it's states of items to ACE server to be
> displayed on the touchscreens.  

Correct.

> ACE clients take screen hits and tell
> the server such and such button has been hit.  ACE server then sends a
> command to ECS and ECS will fulfill said command.  ECS then sends the
> corrected status back again.

Just a fine point to clear up here.  The command(s) for each button are 
stored in each client.  So, pressing a button actually sends the entire 
command to the server for processing, not just the button that was pressed.

If a command is sent to ecs that changes the state of an item, and 
monitoring is enabled for that item, then ecs sends the new state to the 
ace server.  The ace server then broadcasts the new state to all 
clients.  So, even if you change the state of an item from one client, all 
the other clients will know about it.

One final point is that you don't need a touchscreen to use ace.  A mouse 
or other pointing device works just fine.

Dan 
Hoehnen                            
dhoehnen@infinet.com                   
He who dies with the most toys, wins! 
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