Re: Production Scoreboards

[Rich Duzenbury <rduz-midrange@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> There is an ethernet card in the board that you assign an IP address and
> each number on the board has a 2 position address.
>
> You can telnet from a PC to it again sending the above string as
> 'control B' "04" "1234"'control C" total of 8 characters.

If Telnet is successful, I would suggest writing a socket client, since 
that's all telnet is anyway, as the best option .  You have more control 
over when things happen.  Say for example you wanted to Flip on a light on 
the scoreboard, wait two seconds, flip it off, flip on another light and 
then sequence back and forth twenty times.  It would be easier to code that 
in a socket client than trying to control when a printer file gets pushed 
to a writer.


> This sure sounds like it ought to be easy.  Does this make the printer
> scenario even more realistic?

I don't have the docs, but it sounds like the device is listening on the 
telnet port (21?) and using a telnet type protocol.  One internet printing 
protocol (LPR) listens on 515.  The message protocols are somewhat 
different.  I'm just guessing, but I wouldn't put much money on the 
designers deciding that the scoreboard should use the LPR protocol.  It's 
not impossible, though.

Also, It makes error handling a bit odd, as in "Hey Frank, The scoreboard 
isn't working."  Frank says, "Did you check to see if the writer is started 
or has any messages?"

If indeed the scoreboard can act as an LPR printer, here are the 
conventions that the scoreboard would adhere to in accepting print jobs and 
control messages: http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1179.txt.  You would likely 
see something in the programming documentation that discusses which port(s) 
the device listens on, and if it's a standard internet protocol, exactly 
which one(s) it is.

Regards,
Rich