need some help with the OI, and wiring a display

[Ian W.]

Originally Posted by pryoplasm

well, its not necessary, but something nice that i thought up for one of the drivers. in practice during the 6 weeks of hell (an affecionate name i assure you) she was able to listen to the compressor that creates a vacuum (which uses the helicopter theroy of engineering, where if you can't make it silent, then make it loud as hell) and was able to know whether or not the compressor was on or not.

in short, whenever the compressor is on, i want it to have a light or something go on at the drivers station.

thanks for listening

No problem, this should be pretty easy, I had a similar problem two years ago and came up with a easy answer.

Know those LEDs right on the OI? Those are controlled by two bytes, led_byte1 and led_byte2, that are broken up into their bits. I'm not sure off the top of my head what the bits are called, but look it up in ifi_aliases.h, I seem to remember it being fairly obvious what the variables were for.

Once you find those variables, drop something like this into the code that controls you compressor (I'm writing pseudo-code, don't copy and paste )...

 if compressor is on:
    led_1 = 1;
 else:
    led_1 = 0;

That way, when your compressor turns on (I'm assuming by the pressure switches), an LED on the OI comes on, when the compressor turns off, the LED turns off.

I'd write more, but I've got to run to my next class now, hopefully this is helpful, otherwise I'll check back this afternoon if you need more help .

[Greg McCoy]

We use our "user byte" selectable in the little display on the OI to show the pressure from the sensor, nicely converted to PSI in the software. We also have a telemetry select switch on our OI that lets us select different data (the pressure, arm sensor positions) to send to the user byte...another simple solution...

[pryoplasm]

Originally Posted by Greg McCoy

We use our "user byte" selectable in the little display on the OI to show the pressure from the sensor, nicely converted to PSI in the software. We also have a telemetry select switch on our OI that lets us select different data (the pressure, arm sensor positions) to send to the user byte...another simple solution...

for our compressor, its for a vacuum, so psi isnt that hard, thanks for the info, and i talked to one of our programmers, and he should be able to spit something up by the next regional

thanks everyone

[deltacoder1020]

just take a look in the default code - down at the bottom of Default_Routine there's code the sets the state of the LEDs on the OI - play around with that to your hearts content.

[pryoplasm]

well, i dont have a problem with the programming, but more of not having the interface in front of me, so i dont know where to place something. also, i found out i can use the RS232 port for output on the OI, but it needs its own power source, and i am worried of toasting the OI with too much ampage...