Advice Needed

[Tom Droege <tdroege2@earthlink.net>]

Dan and I just went up and awakened TOM2 and TOM3 from their winter 
hibernation in the dome.

I want to install a camera in the dome, and use the RS232 link to open and 
close it.

I would like to do all this under linux, but will use Windos and QBasice if 
desperate.

Here is what I need to be able to do:

1) I will put a separate linux machine in the dome.  There is none there 
now.  It will be on the ethrenet.

2) I want to install a cheap webcam on this machine.  I want one that will 
just work, otherwise it will be easier to use Windows.  Since cameras are 
so cheap, I am quite willing to buy one that is known to work.  This seems 
to be the easiest approach to using something on linux.

3) I want to run a simple program on the linux machine which sends 
characters out on the serial port.  Best if I can do this in a  perl 
program.  I need to be able to send the single characters A, a, B, b in 
order to control the two halves of the dome up or down.  Really complicated 
stuff.  It looks like I will need to send about 10 "A"s a spaced in time to 
open one half of the dome and 10 "a"s spaced in time to close the dome.  So 
I need to know a little about time.  I need to specify, for example, how 
long a "send and 'a' a second" loop is to run.  I don't need precision 
time.  But I do need rough knowledge of time.  Hmmm!  I guess i can just 
read Date and parse it to get what I want.  DOS has a seconds since 
midnight, does linux have a similar time command?

4) I want to be able to sit in my office elsewhere on the ethernet and open 
a window that shows what the camera sees.  Then I want to open a terminal 
and run the program to open and close the dome.  I don't trust the 
mechanics of the dome, so I want to be able to watch it when I move 
it.  Possibly I will want to run more than one camera at a time to see what 
I want to see.  One might be outside looking at the weather.

All this sort of thing is known to work on linux, I just have to learn to 
do it.  So if you all advise me to go ahead, then someone will have to lead 
me by the hand.

This is, of course, great fun.  Mad scientist at work, and all that.  We 
were able to test that the RS232 control worked to control the dome with a 
QBasic test program.

Tom Droege