Serin vs Serin2

[The Master]

hmm, i see what thats doing. the timeout is designed to turn the outputs off if there is no data for 2 secs. the serin really does need to wait for 250,address all the time. just waiting for 250 then using an if-then statement to check the address takes enough time to cause problems.

i suppose the only way to do it is to send a long string from the PC that includes 250 and every address that i might use (about 1 to 40 should do)

[mackrackit]

Yes, the timeout will let the program move on if the wait character is not seem. With out the time out, the program could "wait" forever.

Depending on what you are doing you could decrease the timeout and check often, or use interrupts.

Or to maybe speed things up-- wait for "X" and write "address" value to a VAR(doing that already).

Then have some if / thens / else deciding what to do. This way the serial transmissions are short.
Kind of like you said but the long string is not needed.

Sorry if I am confusing things

[The Master]

that idea about putting the address into a variable and using if-then is how i had it in the first place. the trouble i had is that it would fire when the string gets sent out and try to read the first bunch of bytes. if the address didnt match it would return to serin but by that time the rest of the data has already passed.

there is only 1 string that gets sent out of the PC but that string has the values for all the chips in it