TDT RZ2 Manual page 636

17-18
Power Requirements
The button box is supplied with a 3.3 Volt lithium-ion battery pack. This high current
battery should provide up to 24 hours of continuous use per charge. The lithium-ion
battery charges in under three hours with the supplied 9 Volt battery charger. The
ON/OFF switch, the power connection for the battery charger, and a power indicator
light are found on the back of the button box. The Power/(Low Bat) LED lights
when the button box is on and flashes if the battery is low.
Important! To operate any features of the button box the power must be turned on and the
device must be connected to an RP2.1 or RV8 that is powered on and connected
to a PC.
Caution!
A low battery may give erroneous results. If the battery is low, the battery charger
can be connected to the device. This will charge the battery and power the box at
the same time.
BBox Control
LEDs can be controlled and button presses can be acquired by including the
necessary circuit segments in the RPvdsEx circuit that will be run on the controlling
device. The button box can also be controlled using ActiveX and Matlab, or any
programming language that supports ActiveX. Before designing or debugging circuits
for the button box, ensure that the button box is connected to the RP2.1 or RV8
that will be used for control and that the button box power is turned on. The buttons
will only operate when the button box is powered.
The remaining button box help topics provide the necessary information for basic
button box control, including circuits that acquire button responses and test for correct
or incorrect responses to button presses. The information provided assumes some
knowledge of RPvdsEx and possibly ActiveX. Users with custom built button boxes
should modify circuits based on the configuration of the buttons.
Acquiring BBox Button Presses
The most efficient way to acquire button presses is with the WordIn component in
RPvdsEx. The WordIn checks all the digital input lines and returns a 16-bit value
from the digital line addressed. Input values are generated as a bit-mask that
determines which buttons were pressed. Users can also record the inputs from the
individual digital I/O lines. The RPvdsEx examples in this topic use the WordIn
method.
BBOX Button Box
RP2.1 to BBOX Connection
System 3