RE: FW: [HOMEVIS] The coolest piece of hardware ever

["Kevin Hawkins" <lists@xxxxxxx>]

The SitePlayer can send data out on a serial port very easily and you can
also control the state of the I/O pins with ease, however the reverse is
not
so easy - it is meant as a 'web server' to display & control  the state
of a
device rather than a way of moving data between a client PC and the device.
So the data coming in the serial port or the changing of an I/O pin is
'mapped' to an area of memory and this is normally displayed on a  web page
as a value, text or an On/Off state. The catch is that you have to prefix
the serial data therefore with an address to store that data in. The
Siteplayer normally has a co-processor - just a small device like a PIC
that
handles this and the exact interfacing to the device.



There was talk of an alternate firmware offering for the
SitePlayer that would provide a telnet type port connection for a serial
device - bidirectional and transparent but this has not materialised yet.
The developer of the SitePlayer is essentially a one person company and he
has some pressing family issues to resolve that have eclipsed the project.



All in all it's a bargain piece of hardware ($30) for a large
number of projects but not as a general Ethernet connected I/O device.



Kevin



-----Original Message-----
From: ian.bird@xxxxxxx
[mailto:ian.bird@xxxxxxx]
Sent: 14 March 2003 15:18
To: ukha_d@xxxxxxx
Subject: RE: [ukha_d] FW: [HOMEVIS] The coolest piece of hardware ever




Almost, IIRC you can send data to the device via a rather hotch potch
method but it is very difficult for the data to go the other way. It may be
the other way round of course. I looked into it a bit about a year ago and
a lot has happened since then. Essentially data one way - can be done. Data
the other way - very difficult and maybe impossible depending on the data.

Ian

Ian Bird
CibaVision UK Ltd.
Direct dial 01489 775570
Fax           01489 779570


---------+---------------------------->
"Nikola Kasic"
<nikola@xxxxxxx
>

14/03/03 14:52
Please respond to
ukha_d

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To:       <ukha_d@xxxxxxx>

cc:

Subject:  RE: [ukha_d] FW: [HOMEVIS] The coolest piece of hardware
ever

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In the other words, with Siteplayer you can only configure device, but
not send data to device. Have I understood correctly?
Nik

-----Original Message-----
From: ian.bird@xxxxxxx
[mailto:ian.bird@xxxxxxx]
Sent: 14 March 2003 14:21
To: ukha_d@xxxxxxx
Subject: RE: [ukha_d] FW: [HOMEVIS] The coolest piece of hardware ever



This is probably only half the story but.....

The wiznet unit and I think the Xport in the original mail are both pass
through devices with web page style configuration. The siteplayer module
does not easily support this passing of data and so is not well suited
to
the likes of xAP messages.

I have been able to set up the Wiznet dev board with an IP and send and
receive xAP messages to my own xAP device on the serial/RS485 network on
the other side. From the PC this has all been Ethernet of course. This
is
the sort of gateway functionality we need rather than simply having a
web
page presence onto a device. As it was said earlier this latter approach
seems great but is not very useful. If we are lucky there may be a demo
of
some of the kit at UKHA 2003, fingers crossed.

Ian