Rudeofus wrote:brittonphotography wrote:But we don't need a CPU/MCU in our receiving circuit. An FPGA can do the same (albeit with more effort) without replicating micro controller behavior.
Ouch! FPGAs are cool, but that's going to do nasty things to both the work load and the wiring. I'm currently trying to find out how the Elinchrom units get around this. Given the remote control of flash intensity that they offer, it seems strange that they wouldn't be using a micro. Personally, I'm not convinced that adding a micro to a radio remote trigger counts as an inventive step, but the US patent office think otherwise and sadly unless I can find prior art in the either the European or US databases the only way to test this would be in an expensive court case.Apart from FPGA, we could try to use some special purpose processors like signal processors (the AD2181 doesn't even have a push/pop instruction, how much more special purpose can it get?), some are even supported by the GNU toolchain.
I think I'd rather code for FPGA.PS: Since the pocketwizard patent so specifically mentions that their invention employs a CPU, I assume there was prior art for triggering a flash via a simple RF link.
I think actually remote triggering via any method is covered from a while back (Polaroid seemed to have something from the mid 60s that covered remote flash triggering). As I mentioned, I find it dubious that the micro counts as an inventive step. The problem with patents in this day and age is that the examiners often have absolutely no idea what they're talking about. (I know the lawyers don't!) which makes it easier to patent a "non-inventive" invention.
I'll keep hunting.
Jon