betabrite messenger 0.1.0 review

betabrite is a small commandline utility to program a BetaBrite LED sign

License: GPL (GNU General Public License) File size: 0K Developer: Bob Rudis

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betabrite is a small commandline utility to program a BetaBrite LED sign.

It uses the serial port to send instructions using the ALPHA Sign Communications Protocol (ASCP).

Add a little Java, perl, XML, cross-platform libraries, standards, LED graphics-sharing/serialization and web-enabled components and you may start to see the bigger picture.

While the primary goal is to have cool tools to hack the signs and develop a community of folks who share sign-related "stuff", I'm hoping it becomes something that will help me and others see what it takes to make something small into something very real and very useful.

What's New in This Release:
betabrite's limited functionality has been fully tested on Sun/SPARC systems with versions 8 & 9 of Solaris with gcc 2.95 and 3.
It *compiles* on linux x86 (RedHat 7.3) but not fully tested.
Start by executing 'configure', followed by 'make' and 'make install' (provided there are no errors generated). Default installs put the "betabrite" binary in "/usr/local/bin".
Running "betabrite -h" displays the command line options.
displays "This is some text" on the sign with auto-color
nd auto-display features. It uses the maximum hold time
available on the device and stores the message in file "A" (see the PDF listed in the README regarding BetaBrite memory files).