Control Scheme

[Tom Droege <tdroege@veriomail.com>]

Chris writes:  (In a message that has not yet made it to the list)

>Currently there is no way for the STAMP to send a command to the PC.
>We may want the STAMP to be able to send information to the PC
>without need to poll it. What happens if we connect a rain
>detector detects rain? Do we want poll "is it raining" every
>five minutes 24x7 or just react to a message when it comes?

The short answer is yes.  That is the way the system is designed.  Seems 
like I discussed this a lot as I was designing the system.  I do not 
remember this argument then.  ;^)

At the moment my software reads out a few things and does active control 
things like deciding whether to turn on the chiller every time it completes 
reading a frame.  Since we will never take really long exposures, this is 
probably often enough for a rain detector.

The design plan was to put all the smarts in the PC (where it belongs, I 
think) the Stamp is just a controller that does what it is told and 
measures what is requested.

Tom Droege