Y'all, in the fall, I am a volunteer/parent coach of the middle school cross country team - I Love XC - at my kids' school. I would like to create an app' to: (1) Manage Meet Results (2) Interface (in some fashion) a Timer Display to the system (3) Use some sort of button-pressin' thing to log runners crossing the finish line (Given) Standard A/C power is assumed to be available, even if it's by generator or auto inverter. Yes, battery power would be the greatest, but even if it's with a laptop or PDA/WinCE type device, a proper-sized/arrayed timer display will probably require a fair amount of electricity for any sustained operations.
Now, I have already done some work on (1) and that's not such a big deal. Razzak might now be saying, "Aha! I knew there was a reason he was asking so many questions about Form Timer functionality a while back." He would be correct. However, (2) and (3) are related, at least in the sense that we are talking about external hardware devices, one of which, the Timer Display, is an output device and the other, the "button-pressin' thing", is an input device. So, with regard to: (1) I would like to ask if any of y'all have ever done anything with sending strings/data via RS232/USB/Ethernet to an external display, especially an array of 7-segment LED's or a scrolling LED board from within RBase? I would like to pass the time in some fashion and/or the position of the most recent finisher, perhaps freezing their time until the next runner. Now, I'm doing a lot of info' gathering on bashing/hacking my own clock - "professional" sports displays are quite expensive, at least if they're any good -so I'm not asking anyone about how to design/build the clock, just how to send data to such an output device from Rbase. (2) Has anyone ever used some sort of button which, on keypress/depression, serves as an input, again, via RS232/USB/Ethernet to RBase? This would be logically equivalent to [Left-Click] or [Enter], to log an event, such as recording a runner crossing the line. Again, I have found various information/sources on WWW that discuss the construction and communications of such an input device with microcontrollers and/or PC's, but I really need to learn how to make sure that RBase "hears" such input. I appreciate any help here and if nobody's ever done any of this, that's cool. But I'm committed to makin' this mission, even if it I can't timebox the project. Thanks, Steve in Memphis J. Stephen Wills Program Manager, Research Informatics Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research University of Tennessee Health Science Center 62 S. Dunlap, Suite 400 Memphis, TN 38163 Office: 901-448-2389 FAX : 901-448-7133
