Gilderfluke&Co 'Smart' Brick Animation Control System - Manual (Page 39)

- Smart Brick System Commands -
The MACs Smart Brick System can be controlled by simple
switch closures to start and stop playback or cycling, randomly
select shows, and perform a variety of functions. The Rack
Mounted Smart Brick Brain can also start shows based on the
time of day or countdowns between shows. In addition, you can
talk to any combination of up to two hundred fifty-six Smart Brick
Systems and Digital Audio Repeaters at one time through a serial
data line from your computer, terminal, or control system.
This same serial port must be used to configure the features of
any Smart Brick System, and is used by the system when it needs
to talk to a LaserDisk (or DVD) player or any other serially con-
trolled device. The latter limits the use of the serial port to those
systems which are not controlling LaserDisk (or DVD) players.
All commands sent to the MACs Smart Brick System through its
serial interface take the following format. All characters are sent in
ASCII. All numeric values are sent in HEXadecimal (HEX for short),
and consist of one or more ASCII characters (0-9, A through F).
The case (as in upper and lower) of all input is important. A lower
case 'a' signifies a command, while an 'A' is a numeric value. If
the Smart Brick System receives another command while it is wait-
ing for additional input needed to complete the previous com-
mand, it will abandon the previous command and start working
on the new one.
In the following documentation any input you will send to the
audio system is shown in outline. The response to a command is
shown in italics.
If the Smart Brick System is in a mode where you expect to re-
ceive some response from it (generally in one of the echo
modes), you must wait to receive all of the characters you are ex-
pecting before sending the system a new command. The rea-
son for this is that you are actually talking to up to two hundred
fifty-six microprocessors at a time, and if you issue a command
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