[dcbrown]

Originally Posted by SL8

After reading the first post to the last, I went back to the first again.

Can someone help explain this stuff to me in peasants terms?

Its a "PC" running a flavor of unix operating system that you'll need to write an application program for. Hardware drivers for all the common stuff will be written for you so you just have to call them to get the data you're interested in.

Take EasyC or WPILIB x 1000 in terms of the number of library calls that are available.

NAME taskInfo – task information library
ROUTINES
taskName( ) – get the name of a task residing in the current RTP
taskNameGet( ) – get the name of any task
taskInfoGet( ) – get information about a task
taskOptionsGet( ) – examine task options
taskNameToId( ) – look up the task ID associated with a task name
taskIdDefault( ) – set the default task ID
taskIsReady( ) – check if a task is ready to run
taskIsSuspended( ) – check if a task is suspended
taskIsPended( ) – check if a task is pended

and

NAME eventLib – VxWorks user events library
ROUTINES
eventClear( ) – Clear all events for calling task
eventReceive( ) – Receive event(s) for the calling task
eventSend( ) – Send event(s) to a task

and

NAME clockLib – user-side clock library (POSIX)
ROUTINES
clock_getres( ) – get the clock resolution (POSIX)
clock_setres( ) – set the clock resolution
clock_gettime( ) – get the current time of the clock (POSIX)
clock_settime( ) – set the clock to a specified time (POSIX)
clock_nanosleep( ) – high resolution sleep with specifiable clock

and

NAME timerLib – user-level timer library (POSIX)
ROUTINES
timer_cancel( ) – cancel a timer
timer_connect( ) – connect a user routine to the timer signal
timer_create( ) – allocate a timer using the specified clock for a timing base (POSIX)
timer_open( ) – open a timer
timer_close( ) – close a named timer
timer_unlink( ) – unlink a named timer
timer_delete( ) – remove a previously created timer (POSIX)
timer_gettime( ) – get the remaining time before expiration and the reload value (POSIX)
timer_getoverrun( ) – return the timer expiration overrun (POSIX)
timer_settime( ) – set the time until the next expiration and arm timer (POSIX)
nanosleep( ) – suspend the current task until the time interval elapses (POSIX)
sleep( ) – delay for a specified amount of time
alarm( ) – set an alarm clock for delivery of a signal
_timer_open( ) – open a kernel POSIX timer (system call)
timer_ctl( ) – performs a control operation on a kernel timer (system call)

and on and on and on...