radio interference

This QBasic code fragment reads a Radio Shack serial voltmeter:

OPEN "COM2:600,N,7,2,RS,CS,DS,CD" FOR RANDOM AS 2 a$ =3D "D" DO PRINT #2, "D" ' command a reading in$ =3D INPUT$(14, #2) ' what if t! + .1 ' works on D2400 DOS LOOP UNTIL INKEY$ "" CLOSE #2

This is from the manual for a Keithley 2420 Sourcemeter:

ComOpen$ =3D "COM2: 9600,N,8,1,ASC,CD0,CS0,DS0,LF,OP0,RS,TB8192,RB8192" OPEN ComOpen$ FOR RANDOM AS #1

jsw

Get out a little portable AM radio and see if you can localize the interference. We used to do that for noisy insulators on power poles back when I worked for the phone company. Its shade tree, but it works.

Most likely though that 50' cable is the culprit. Is it shielded cable? Is the shield loose at the far and attached to ground at the serial port?

My God. I've never heard anyone who has so completely bought into the whole enchilada. The billions of dollars that the plutocrats have paid to market their bill of goods to you has really paid off.

It isn't worth trying to argue those points because there are so many of them, and you probably wouldn't believe the facts, anyway. But here's one small example of what you'd see if you actually dug into those ideas of yours to see if they hold up in the face of the evidence: The price of electricity has gone *down*, not up, since Obama came into office. But Obama had nothing to do with it.

Average retail price in 2008 was 11.26 cents/kWhr in 2008. So far in 2011, it's 10.99 cents/kWhr.:

(bottom table, "Electric Sales, Revenue and Average Price")

Maybe you're leaving your lights on at night.

Are you an evidence-based kind of guy, or are you one of those who thinks he already knows what all the answers are? If you're the former, we can pick through those things and see what the facts are. If you're the latter, grab a beer and pull up a stool. You have plenty of company here.

True in a sense perhaps, but since "most people" happen to live either in India or China NOT the US....

The problem here is we have been taking less from the rich and from the corporations for what's going on nearly three decades now and what's happened instead is that family wage jobs continue to disappear and poverty rates have been increasing for the entire period, except during Clintons term....in addition, US wages overall continue to paint a rather dismal portrait when adjusted for inflation.

I'm afraid that's more a part of working in a world economy than less taxes for the rich and corporations. When the rest of the world started to catch up with us in technology/production -and- had lower wages, it caused that sucking sound that Perot spoke about. As far as taxing corporations, as you know, we the purchasers pay all those taxes, so if you eliminate corporate taxes we could sell more products overseas (lower prices) and add jobs here. Mikek

Do facts or history ever enter your thought process? Just wondering. The evidence is that they don't.

Sure, and there's nothing at all wrong with VB6. Have a look at this web page:

Or, this: Basically, you want to do something like:

MSComm1.DTREnable =3D True 'turn on DTR ' wait a little while here for the other end to wake up ' take a reading MSComm1.DTREnable =3D False 'turn off DTR

from the microsoft page: When DTREnable is set to True, the Data Terminal Ready line is set to high (on) when the port is opened, and low (off) when the port is closed. When DTREnable is set to False, the Data Terminal Ready always remains low.

You could put the whole thing inside a timer event, where the timer triggers every 5 minutes. The timer timeout is in milliseconds, so that would be 300000. You can't set a timer that long in vb6, so what you would do is set a timer for, say, 60000 (one minute) - every time that triggers, check if it's the fifth time. If it is, then reset the minute count to zero and go poll for data.

This is all from memory - you're going to have to check to see if I got it right, but...

Drag a timer object into you project. Set it's timeout property to

60000, and set it to enabled.

At the top of the program, declare a global variable: Dim NumberOfMinutes as integer also, declare this function - you're gonna need it soon... Private Declare Sub Sleep Lib "kernel32.dll" (ByVal dwMilliseconds As Long)

Double click on the timer object, and vb will automatically create a subroutine to handle the timer's timeout. This subroutine will be called once a minute.

Sub Timer1.Timer (don't worry about the stuff in parentheses, what goes there is all automatic and you don't need to change it) NumberOfMinutes =3D NumberOfMinutes + 1 if NumberOfMinutes =3D 5 then MSComm1.DTREnable =3D True 'turn on DTR ' wait a second here for the other end to wake up Sleep 1000 ' take a reading (your code goes here) MSComm1.DTREnable =3D False 'turn off DTR NumberOfMinutes =3D 0 end if end sub

One imperfect thing here is that during the sleep 1000, the program is totally hung. If that's a problem, there are ways around it. Just google "vb6 sleep"

That's all you ought to need, I think. But if there's more, let me know.

I'm a hardware guy from way back, but if there's a couple of lines of code that can fix busted hardware, well, why not?

There are supposed to be over 16,000 radio stations online, so I would have to say yes. You can buy a USB internet radio, which is basically a USB memory stick with a HTML user interface & list of stations for under $5 on Ebay.

I have one of these for when I'm away from my house, and don't want to change anything on a computer where I'm at. I still do a little free IT work for non profits and individuals as a hobby.

This is the Sanyo R227 that I have. I got mine for $99.

Two lines of specious information, and a diatribe. So much for technical information.

Andrew VK3BFA.

You've missed the point, there is a moral dimension here - its relatively easy to STOP the interference, no need to run off and get a lawyer and claim you got no responsibility. Thought you lot were better than that.

Andrew VK3BFA.

Pretty sure he has no "thought process"