[fpc-pascal] Communication between machines

[Mark Morgan Lloyd]

Ched wrote:
> Dear All,
> 
> I have to make linux-i386, linux-arm and win-xt computers to communicate 
> together for the instrumentation of a small farm of robotic telescops - 
> telescope control, camera control, image analysis and "chef 
> d'orchestre", with remote access.

What's win-xt in this context?

> Can I use the same sockets unit for linux and windows systems ? Is this 
> not too hard ? I'd like to use the same source code on all these 
> machines - i.e. no specializations.

Should be common code, animated by a thread. I tend to focus on 
Linux/unix, working from memory- and this isn't recent so things might 
have changed- the only significant difference was in the details of some 
name resolution stuff.

However my suggestion would be to look for a pre-existing protocol, 
either a telescope control protocol even if it only exists on serial 
connections (I was thinking INDI there, but it already appears to be 
networked) or a suitable XML-based instrumentation protocol (I wasn't 
thinking INDI, but it appears to fall into that category :-)

I'd say that a Pascal translation of the INDI headers would be in 
everybody's interest.

-- 
Mark Morgan Lloyd
markMLl .AT. telemetry.co .DOT. uk

[Opinions above are the author's, not those of his employers or colleagues]