[Question] Recognising the length of redstone pulse

Is it possible to recognise the length of a redstone pulse? So in other words if a pulse is received for 3 seconds it will recognise and translate that as say for example a word and if its shorter it wont print/recognise it?
If thats possible how would you code the computer to translate the pulse?

Well, you could periodically check for redstone activity. Like:

-- wait for pulse
while not redstone.getInput(side) do
  sleep(0.5)
end
-- count on time
local duration = 0
while redstone.getInput(side) do
  duration = duration + 0.5
  sleep(0.5)
end
-- duration now holds the pulse length in seconds.

However, if you simply want to communicate between computers, you should use wireless modems and the rednet api.

Im confused why everyone uses redstone and not rednet… Rednet is so much easier… Check out the api at the wiki. It will save your life

The best way to do it would be with "redstone" events:

local sSide = "left"

local bPulseOn = false
local nStart

while true do
  os.pullEvent("redstone")
  if rs.getInput(sSide) ~= bPulse then
    if bPulseOn then
      local duration = os.clock() - nStart
      bPulseOn = false
      print("Pulse duration: ", duration)
    else
      nStart = os.clock()
      bPulseOn = true
    end
  end
end

It's efficient and will give you the pulse duration in milliseconds.

tfoote, on 15 June 2012 - 04:26 PM said:

Im confused why everyone uses redstone and not rednet… Rednet is so much easier… Check out the api at the wiki. It will save your life

Rednet is for communication between computers, redstone is for redstone input and output, and it's usefull to "communicate" with other mods or things that work with redstone. They are two different things.