USB port/Serial

[Thomas McGrath III]

Hello everyone,

I am evaluating whether to buy an IO board from Makingthings.com called  
a teleo. It is a USB device but is communicated to via serial RS232  
commands. They say it shows up as a serial port. Since I don't know  
enough about this I wanted to ask anyone here on the list for help. Has  
anyone worked with a VCP from within REV?
I don't want to use Flash or Max for this. The company says I will have  
to work at the raw level but I don't know if that just means serial  
commands or  more raw than that?

Thanks

Tom

" The good news is that the USB device that we use is supported by a
Virtual Console Port (VCP) driver on all 3 major operating systems. To
you, the Revolution user, this appears to be a serial port so the RS232
features built in to Revolution should work very well. We use this same
driver for our work, and you can download this from our website.

What our Flash, Max/MSP, and C/C++ layer does is process this serial
data and present a simpler interface for those environments. In your
case you will have to work at the raw level.

Unfortunately our raw protocol is not terribly well documented, because
we never expected many people to use it. I get just enough requests for
this that I keep thinking I should do it, but not quite enough to put
this task at the top of my queue.

The raw protocol is described a little here:

    
http://www.makingthings.com/products/documentation/teleo_user_guide/ 
teleo_application_sdk.html#teleo_channel

Basically, each module has an address, and each device on the module has
a device number, and each "feature" of a device has a port number. The
protocol then reads or writes to this (address, device, port)."