February 24, 2005

IR Ports

Mike and I spent Thursday night trying to get the IR ports working. According to the handyboard site, you should be able to recieve IR commands by using the ir_data(dummy) command, but we did not have any IR sending device to test whether or not this worked. Our original Handyboard is on the com 1 port, which will contain the hangman code and send out IR signals to a second handyboard connected to the com 2 port, which will be responsible for recieving IR signals and running the motor.

As of right now, IR sending is not supported by the interactive c libraries, so there is no way to send an IR signal using the handyboard out-of-the-box. We used an IR library built by David Negro that can be found here. We were able to install and run the library successfully, and modified the code to send an IR signal. We also installed the Sony IR Decoding Routines just in case it was needed to help the handyboard recieve IR input.

After installing the libraries and downloading the proper code to both handyboards, we were not able to send a signal from hanyboard A to handyboard B. It appeared as though board A was sending a signal, but for whatever reason, board B could not recieve anything. We did not have another IR sending device, so there was no way to tell whether board A or B was malfunctioning.

ICB and LIS files

An ICB file is a binary library file for IC files and cannot be edited in interactive c. The only way to load an ICB file to your code and use its functions is to include it in the compilation of your IC file. LIS files (List Files) act as a project file. They can be read and edited by interactive c and list out all of the files you want to compile at once. So, if I have IRINT.icb and I want to run IR.c with it you fill in the LIS file with only the following:

	IRINT.icb
	IR.c

After you load the LIS file with these two lines, check it, download it and run it, in interactive c and the program will be compiled and placed onto the handyboard with the library needed to run the C file. To read more about List Files, go here.