Project: Programs to allow interactions between old Lego Control Interfaces (RCX, Lego Interface B, others?)

[Gunners TekZone]

@Bliss  Yay, your wonderful efforts have succeeded in helping me make a dirt simple Blink routine for my Nano based Int-A simulator.  Life is good! 

Edited 3 hours ago by Gunners TekZone

[evank]

3 hours ago, Gunners TekZone said:

Yes, you are correct.  It was the input lines that I was thinking about, being directly wired to the connector.  But they all are powered by the 5v line on same connector.

I think this is an accurate resource of that, that someone else made.  Still working on 1st coffee, so I could be hallucinating enough to rival AI  

Hey I recognize that image. :)

[Gunners TekZone]

2 hours ago, evank said:

Hey I recognize that image. :)

Ha... I would be surprised if there was something Interface-A related that you didn't already have on file 

Oddly enough... I know found it somewhere else???  One of my many saved shortcuts... But I had a bazillion tabs open and lost track of where it was from. 
But at least now I have copies of all the rest of the matching schematics from your page 

I should have started on your page, but I often find it too hard for me to keep track of all the various website links, of the many technical things and projects I eventually want to reference from.
Now I mosty save everything I want into dedicated file folders.  Who knows, I might even get around to organising those a bit better... One day... 

Edited 16 hours ago by Gunners TekZone

[Bliss]

In the newest version, I added a While/Until condition in the Loop Forever block so it give more flexibility.  Before the Loop Forever coud not exit...

Also, you will notice at the right of the Connect RCX button, there is a CM check...  Don't panic, I'm just preparing to tentatively add the CyberMaster support...  Not finished yet...  I'll let you know.
I will add the support for the CM according to the information I got here and there but I do not own a CM...
So I will count on testers to help on this...

 

Edited 15 hours ago by Bliss

[evank]

9 hours ago, Gunners TekZone said:

Ha... I would be surprised if there was something Interface-A related that you didn't already have on file 

Oddly enough... I know found it somewhere else???  One of my many saved shortcuts... But I had a bazillion tabs open and lost track of where it was from. 
But at least now I have copies of all the rest of the matching schematics from your page 

I should have started on your page, but I often find it too hard for me to keep track of all the various website links, of the many technical things and projects I eventually want to reference from.
Now I mosty save everything I want into dedicated file folders.  Who knows, I might even get around to organising those a bit better... One day... 

I know the image because it was created by a friend at my request: https://brickhacks.com/9750.php.

Edited 6 hours ago by evank

[Gunners TekZone]

Your friend done good 

12 hours ago, Bliss said:

Don't panic, I'm just preparing to tentatively add the CyberMaster support

Don't forget the kitchen sink 

[Bliss]

34 minutes ago, Gunners TekZone said:

Don't forget the kitchen sink

Ha ha, I was wondering what you meant by that and search google about this expression...

When will you test the Int.A by the way?  I'm looking forward to see a video from you of blockly running Int.A through an arduino Nano :-)

 

Edited 3 hours ago by Bliss

[evank]

19 minutes ago, Bliss said:

I'm looking forward to see a video from you of blockly running Int.A through an arduino Nano :-)

 

Me too.

I would like to test it but I don't really have time.

It seems like some people here would rather just build cool electronics and software, than actually build Lego models from that technology! :)

@Bliss I will have to update my website to reflect the existence of Blockly as another control alternative for Interface A.

I'm also glad you called it "-ly" because the game I'm building is "Blocky" Kong. Two-plus years into that model and it's still not done, but overall I am making progress. It uses six or seven Interface A connected to a single Apple //e. Programming? As everyone here knows, I use Applesoft BASIC.

[Gunners TekZone]

36 minutes ago, Bliss said:

I'm looking forward to see a video from you of blockly running Int.A through an arduino Nano :-)

I will do something as soon as I can. 

Does Blockly have an array option or something to feed in many data steps through a routine?  Else it may be a long, long, long group of repetitive ON/OFF blocks and timers. 
 

20 minutes ago, evank said:

It seems like some people here would rather just build cool electronics and software, than actually build Lego models from that technology! :)

It is almost like some people are mechanically oriented , some enjoy the flow of electrons, others prefer pure logic and some just like to play with toys 

Personally, as a bit of a "jack of many trades... when awake  "... I embrace ALL of the above in my lifestyle!  “Leg Godt!” 

[Bliss]

1 hour ago, Gunners TekZone said:

Does Blockly have an array option or something to feed in many data steps through a routine?  Else it may be a long, long, long group of repetitive ON/OFF blocks and timers.

Can you provide an example of what you want to achieve?  Is it something you did using TC Logo?  I f you can provide the program, I might be able to implement missing blocks...
For example, do you want to turn ON/OFF one or more outputs at a certain time like a "Rooling DRUM" ?
In blockly, they have List blocks which are arrays But I have not use it yet...  I'm going to make some test...

 

[Bliss]

Here an example of usage of the Lists in Blockly to make Drum Control of the state of the 6 outputs of Int.A:

On the left, I first define the content of the MasterList. (6 items)
Each element of the master list has a small list built from text with delimiter ",".  This text represent the wanted state of each output, 1 = ON, 0 = OFF.  Leftmost is for Output 0...
Then after MasterList definition, there is the forever loop that iterates through the MasterList Elements using a "Count with" block (1 to 6)
Each element of MasterList is put in L1 variable one at a time and we call UpdateOutputs Function and then wait 0.5 sec for the next iteration.
The UpdateOutputs function just go through each items in L1 sublist which are the 1's and 0's...
Should you need more patterns, just add more content in MasterList before the forever loop.
The "count with "block adjust itself automatically to the length of the Master List.
If you need different time between each iteration, you could add the delay into each text for example: 1,0,1,0,1,0,2.6 where 2.6 would be set into a Variable WT that would be used in the Wait block.
Note that the UpdateOutputs function could be smaller by iterating through the List L1 and use count variable in the LegoA1 out blocks...

Edited 5 minutes ago by Bliss