[GreenKeys] USB-teletype adapters

[Duncan Brown]

Eric,
On 05-Jun-16 23:59, epvgk at limpoc.com wrote:
> Yeah, the autoprint thing was a bit of a last minute addition. It will accept
> backspaces for correction but that's about it. I had imagined people would just
> type and edit text in Notepad or something and then cut-n-paste it via a terminal
> program.
I had various experiences with the different terminal programs and some 
where not repeatable, so I'm not real sure what was going on with them.  
I got the best results entering text with ExtraPuTTY, but it was the 
last one I tried and it didn't give me any grief correcting text, so I 
used it.

When I was having problems with making corrections, I thought about how 
nice it would be just to do it in Notepad and then paste it in, but for 
some reason didn't think it would work.

Most of my experience is with 5-bit codes rather than 8-bit, so the fact 
that you could send "backspaces" along with the text didn't occur to me!

> Since it sounds like a lot of people would like a more feature-filled autoprint
> solution, I've been thinking about a way to do it. Using a Raspberry Pi or other
> small single board computer, a couple of switches, and one of these interface
> boards might be the way to go. You could put text on an SD card and have it print
> to the loop when a button is pushed. More buttons, more choice of texts to print.
> Raspberry Pi Zero is <$20 and more than sufficient for the task. I'll look into
> a basic setup that could be installed to accomplish that.
The thought of having multiple stored messages occurred to me, don't 
know if the extra complexity of selecting the messages would be worth 
it. What you have now is a nice basic solution and we just have to learn 
the details of what can & can't be done.

One hardware comment - I had problems with the small screw terminals.  I 
don't know what is available and realize that you wanted to keep them 
small to keep the board small, but they might be too small.  Standard 
TTY loop cables are usually 18 gauge (not that they need to be, just 
what was typically used and what is available with 200V insulation) and 
that barely fits into these screw terminals. Also I striped the 
screwdriver slot trying to tightened the screw on one of them.

As far as upgrades, I would  rather see wi-fi added before multiple 
messages.  There was some discussion about some new small wi-fi boards 
here a few months ago.  I am thinking about being able to send to 
multiple machines in the Museum (or home) without a lot of cabling & 
patch panels, but once on a wi-fi network, you are only one step away 
from the Internet. Of course, then you need some sort of addressing 
method to talk to other machines around the world - and then you are at 
iTelex!

Thanks & have fun,

Duncan




>
> eric
>
> On Sun, Jun 05, 2016 at 09:22:51PM -0400, Duncan Brown wrote:
>> Thanks to Eric and everyone who offered terminal programs!
>>
>> Presently, I'm using old W7 laptops with serial ports at home and at the AWA
>> Museum, so I don't really need the USB interface (yet).  My main interest
>> with these boards was the on-board "automessage/autoprint" feature which
>> should work well for demos at the Museum.
>>
>> I finally decided to go with ExtraPuTTY (the original PuTTY would probably
>> be OK, too) as a terminal program due to its text editing ability. I  found
>> that with the TeraTerm and Terminal.exe programs, if you make a mistake
>> while entering text or a command, you can correct the text on the screen,
>> but the correction is not transmitted. (It is like there are separate screen
>> & transmit buffers, and you can only correct the screen buffer.) When you
>> are entering short commands, this is not a big problem. But (unless you are
>> a perfect typist) entering hundreds of characters can be very frustrating.
>> ExtraPuTTY handles corrections to the display properly, so text entry is
>> much easier.
>>
>> ExtraPuTTY also saves your configuration, so that you don't have to set it
>> up each time you open the program. (If the other programs offered this, I
>> couldn't find it.)
>>
>> Have fun,
>>
>> Duncan
>> K2OEQ
>>
>>
>>
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