I'm working on next week's article about the #twatch ethernet LCD backpack mode. Please let me know if you have any suggestions or requests.
Hi Ian
If I wanted to send UDP messages to the backpack, how would I do it. Ideally without the requirements of Smartie etc.
I've ordered one with the idea that I could use it for alarming in my network and it would run on a small power footprint. Haven't thought about SNMP and heartbeats, but this would be a great source to allow a distributed network to report into a single node (and a very lean one too).
Each node would push its heart beat, and also a alarm if generated, this could be done in any language as long as its UDP/TCP?
Any ideas?
The Microchip TCPIP stack includes generic UDP clients and servers. You could certainly write a little server that listened for periodic packets. I'm not sure the best way to make it an abstract, configurable app, but a custom configuration for your network would be possible.
If your nodes sending the heartbeat can speak TCPIP, you could just use the existing TCP server and send Matrix Orbital formatted commands that update a certain line of the screen with a time stamp or something.