On 10/31/01 at 11:14 PM Dilwyn Jones wrote: > He he, next step is to get one of those remote controller watches to > remote control the QL, or to get software ont he QL to drive an > infrared LED or something to work with such a learning or programmable > remote control. Now if Simon Goodwin and Al Boehm can get a MIDI synth > to work via a QL network port it shouldn't be too hard to interface an > infrared LED to a network port either so we can multitask a little > button program on the QL to cange channels, mute the volume when the > phone rings, videoplus the TV and video, etc etc. Any offers anyone?
Ah, what an interesting idea! It should actualy be quite trivial to add an IR LED to the network port. Here is another idea, and I'll just put it in the public domain here since I don't have the time to develop it: With some rather simple mods to the internal network circuitry in a QL it would be possible to make the network completely IR based. I wonder why it wasn't originally done that way... Basically, the 8302 ULA has two pins, net in and net out. They only get combined into one single shared wire externally, using a couple of resistors and a transistor (there is also an overvoltage protector on the Aurora). The software driving the port is responsible for the input being ignored while the output is transmitting. All it would take would be to have a buffer driving several IR LEDs (pointing in different directions so you don't need to aim the communicating QLs accurately) from the net out pin, and an IR detector driving the net in pin. A bit more might be needed if one would want to avoid upsetting any other IR devices around, but not much... All of these components are easy to find and cheap. Nasta
