I have been going with three buttons for the transmit procedure because I needed to calibrate light and dark rectangles before I could read the data. That made it cumbersome and confusing to use the transmit procedure.

Here’s how the old data transmit procedure went:

1. Click the hi-cal button.
2. Turn the robot on and hold it up to the screen.
3. The LED blinks once, then twice.
4. Click the lo-cal button.
5. The LED blinks once, then twice, then once again.
6. Click the Transmit button and wait.
7. If the LED blinks twice, it’s a successful transfer.

I would have liked to have had everything done with a single click, but I knew that would require time synchronization between the robot and computer while reading the hi and lo cal rectangles, and I had troubles in the past with time synchronization.

But then . . . I realized that my troubles with robot-computer time-synchronization for data transmission involved mere milliseconds. In the calibration procedure, however, I was dealing with full seconds. The robot and computer surely can’t get out of time synchronization by a full second in only a couple seconds unless their relative velocity to one another is greater than 87% of the speed of light, in which case I have bigger problems.

So here’s how the new procedure goes:

1. Turn the robot on and hold it up to the screen.
2. The LED blinks once.
3. Click the Transmit button and wait.
4. If the LED blinks twice, it’s a successful transfer.

Instead of having to watch nine LED blinks and click three times, the user need only watch for three blinks and click once.

So simple a 57-year old can do it!