On beamline motor control

[hoffberg@aps.anl.gov (Mike Hoffberg)]

Why is this being discussed in Beamline Controls?

Anyway,

Crystal Semiconductor makes the IR reciever chip, CS8130, that detects
all of the codes and ouputs its data in a serial format.

In other words, what you want to make is an IR serial port.  You get
an IR receiver, hook it up to this chip.  The circuit is then
connected to a regular serial port using something like a MAX-232 that
converts RS-232 levels to TTL (5 volt).

Now you have the IR interface to a serial port.  This can be connected
to anything, a PC, IOC, PLC.  The controller can be something like a
Newton or HP that has a built in IR serial port, and a nice interface,
or it can be a regular remote control.

I would think that you would rather not use a standard TV remote,
because it does not offer the error correction/security that an
encoded word or stream of words that can be sent out using a smart
hand held terminal.

Now all you need on the 'base' computer is some sort of program that
initializes the Crystal chip, and then monitors the serial port.  It
can also be used to continually send out information to the hand held
terminal so that the current status can be displayed on it.

MIKE
Michael Hoffberg               [rest of             /.\ Argonne
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