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minivas(oscar) Animation minivas(oscar)

NAME

minivas - control Lyon-Lamb MiniVAS tape controller

DESCRIPTION

The Lyon-Lamb MiniVAS can control a single tape or optical disk device. (For simplicity, this man page refers only to "the tape". The lvr5000 class is much better suited to recording on the Sony LVR-5000 optical disk.) The minivas class communicates with the MiniVAS equipment using a serial device. For information on how to physically configure the MiniVAS, please consult the document, "???" and the MiniVAS user's manual.

SUPERCLASS

object

INSTANCE VARIABLES

serial_port is the name of the serial port that the MiniVAS is connected to. It is normally something like "/dev/ttya", but defaults to being empty, so the LYMB programmer is responsible for setting it.

device_name names the type of recording device the MiniVAS will control. Sending the minivas object a print_known_devices! message lists the valid values.

frames_per_recording is the number of frames on the tape or optical disk that will be recorded every time the minivas object receives a record! message.

start_frame is the starting frame number when initialized.

MESSAGES

print_known_devices! prints a list of the valid strings for the device_name instance variable.

initialize! initializes the MiniVAS based upon the device_name and start_frame instance variable values.

raw: string sends string to the MiniVAS. This allows the LYMB programmer to get at the full power of the MiniVAS. Most higher-level messages are implemented in terms of raw: and expect:. For more details, consult the MiniVAS manual.

expects: string causes the minivas object to wait until the sequence of characters in string have been received from the MiniVAS. This allows the LYMB programmer to get at the full power of the MiniVAS. Most higher-level messages are implemented in terms of raw: and expect:. For more details, consult the MiniVAS manual.

cue_tape! sets the tape to the start_frame and initializes the MiniVAS to record frames_per_recording frames each time a record! message is sent to the minivas object.

rewind! rewinds the tape to the beginning (not to the start_frame instance variable).

play! starts playing the tape from the current frame at normal speed.

stop! stops the tape.

init_tape: seconds lays down Lyon-Lamb frame codes for the next seconds time on the tape.

record! lays down frames_per_recording frames on the tape.

EXAMPLE

Use of the minivas object is relatively complicated. Instead of displaying a full script that uses the minivas object here, or sticking in a useless, watered-down example, please consult the files recording.scr and minivas- slave.scr in the scripts/oscar directory.