Gilderfluke&Co old Smart Brick Manual - Manual (Page 129)

- Start and End Strings -
STRINGS are the names of the list of commands which you can tell the Brick Brain send at the start or
end of any show. They are used primarily to talk to LaserDisk players, although they can be used with any
type of show to send and receive characters through the serial port, turn on the tape deck control out-
puts, or cause the Brick Brain to wait until it gets a switch closure on one of itÕs inputs before continuing.
They can also be used to send commands through the serial port to any other piece of show equipment
that needs a serial input, or even just to print on a monitoring screen that a show has started or ended.
On the Show and String Setup menu, there are nine strings shown, each of which can hold up to
12 characters. If longer strings are needed, you just omit the special character which tells the Brick Brain
that it has found the end of a string, and it will continue sending the next string, and the next, and the
next, until it finds an Ôend-o-stringÕ special character or the last character of string 9. This is the only way
to send the last two strings, as they can not be accessed directly as the first seven strings can.
Characters are entered into the strings as HEXadecimal ASCII characters. As an example of the using
ASCII:
To send a letter ÒaÒ, you enter the HEXadecimal value of 61.
If bit seven of any ASCII character is set to =1, then instead of sending the character out the serial
port, the Brick Brain will wait until it receives this character through the serial port. As an example of using
ASCII to receive a character:
To wait until the Brick Brain receives a letter ÒaÒ, you enter a value of E1.
The Brick Brain has a limited supply of patience when waiting for a character to be returned from the
serial port. If it hasnÕt heard anything within about 45 seconds, it will turn on the ФE9Х error message on
the Heads Up Displays.
When displayed on the STRING SETUP MENU, characters that the Brick will wait for are displayed in
parenthesis and have their bit seven hidden. For this reason in the example above, although entered as
ÔE1Õ, this entry would be displayed as Ф(61)Х.
SPECIAL STRING CHARACTERS:
Within the strings there are eleven Ôspecial charactersÕ which can be used. They are defined as fol-
lows:
End-O-String: (00): This special character tells the Brick Brain that it has reached the end of the
current string it is sending.
LaserSearch: (01): This character, when found by the Brick Brain in a string, causes it to send out
a search command to the LaserDisk player to find the frame number found in the LaserDisk
Start for the current show.
PB: (02): When found in a string, this character causes the Brick Brain just to sit and wait until it
gets an input on the manual PB input. Be sure that there are no conflicting commands which
this input may trigger when you activate it. (An example of this would be to have a command
to wait for this input during a start string, and then have this input also stop any show when it is
triggered. This would have the unfortunate effect of stopping the show before it has even
started. This command is not available on Rack Smart Brick Brains when using Panasonic
LaserDisk Players.
Blue: (03): When found in a string, this character causes the Brick Brain just to sit and wait until it
gets an input on the BLUE input. Be sure that there are no conflicting commands which this
input may trigger when you activate it. (An example of this would be to have a command to
G ILDERFLUKE & C O .¥ 205 S. F LOWER S T .¥ B URBANK , CA 91502 ¥ 818/840-9484 ¥ 800/776-5972 ¥ FAX 818/840-9485
119 of 134