Menus

[Ian B]

I have left my I/O program for a minute or ten just whilst we wait for P to
return to the real world. Anyway, I started looking at my plans for a menu
driven interface for my various HA bits.

OK, so the plan is to have a small screen about the size of a credit card
holding 8 lines by 21 characters. Coupled to this will be a load of
electronics for control and connectivity and what have you. The plan is I
will build the menu system on a more powerful platform e.g. a PC and from
there do all the wizzy bits e.g. X-10 etc. The screen etc. will simply be a
window which will get and return data from the PC with me in middle. So, my
problem......

Do I try and hold the menu system (or part thereof) in local memory or try
and update a line at a time from the PC. The answer to this little quandary
will dictate the level of power of the micro needed etc. I think my biggest
concern is speed if I don't hold at least some of the data in memory.

After this I then have to think about the method of data transfer. xAP is
probably too verbose for a line by line on demand scenario so I have only
one choice really for xAP. That is to use xAP to send the menu structure or
part thereof and hold it in the embedded device

Once I have a device working then updating it as and when the PC based menu
structure changes is my next challenge. At least I am a way away from xAP
and discovery and all the other good bits at the moment.

Any thoughts or suggestions welcome at this point. Currently I have the
screen and a basic input via rotary dial working. This is very early days
though.

Thanks

Ian

p.s. my server (glorified PC) went phut at the tail end of last week. I had
no idea how much I used the HV web interface and phone monitoring stuff on
it! Off to buy a new motherboard and power supply now (sadly). Just goes to
show what it means when a central point fails. Thank goodness I replaced
the
RF X-10 receiver which broke a few weeks ago.