[[ Ken and John want to look at the EMC machine control stuff]].

> Please comment and leave your opinions on this protocol. Thank you!

1. Consider variable length packets.

2. Notwithstanding your commendable (really) research so far, there is
almost certainly something available already that does 80% of what you want
and 102% of what you really need.. Implementing something that already
exists allows you to stand on the shoulders of mutant pigmies* (or better).
You get the benefit of their pain and their experience. Depends muchly on
whether you want a tool or an experience.

This may be useful
uLan is message oriented multi-master communication protocol for
microcontrollers. It uses 9-bit character format for addressing and link
control and RS-485 physical layer. More RS-485 cards, converters for PC
RS-232 ports and embedded MCUs are supported


    http://sourceforge.net/projects/ulan/
    http://www.ohloh.net/p/ulan
    http://ulan.wiki.sourceforge.net/space/about
    http://ulan.sourceforge.net/


As might this

    http://swik.net/EMC-Enhanced-Machine-Controller
    https://launchpad.net/emc
    http://sourceforge.net/projects/emc
    http://www.isd.mel.nist.gov/projects/rcslib/emc_links.html
    http://www.mail-archive.com/emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net/

or not :-).





   Russell

_RS485 _RS422 _uLan _emc



* No racist under or overtones implied here, figure of speech, these are not
the ones you want, move along, ...


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