Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Scott A Randell

Jan Stephen Gray

Craig Steven Ranta

Damon V Danieli

Rico Mariani

Harjit Singh

Leonardo G Del Castillo

Jonathan E Caves

Bradford A Christian

Steven J Sinofsky

Daniel R Spalding

Leonardo Del Castillo

Wireless communication protocol for enabling unidirectional communications in a simplex environment, or bidirectional communications in a duplex environment, between a controller and one or more controlled devices. The controller transmits video data and control data that may include voice synthesis coefficients and motor movement coefficients for processing by the controlled devices. The video data drives a display device to depict a scene, and the control data drives the controlled devices so that the controlled devices behave as characters in the scene depicted on the display device. Each controlled device is operable for recognizing messages directed to the device and for parsing these messages into control signals for a number of end effectors, such as speech synthesizers, servo motors, lights, heat sources, pumps, etc. The content of messages for, and the set of end effectors in, any particular controlled device may be changed so that the system is forwardly compatible for new controlled devices using the protocol.

Protocol for a wireless control system

A communications system that provides bandwidth efficient, bi-directional communications over a single communications channel, allowing a master device to control the operation of remote devices. A computer system continuously provides an audio/video presentation on a speaker and display device. During a first time period, the computer system also provides control and speech data, relevant to the presentation, to a link master controller. The link master controller encodes the control and speech data to reduce bandwidth requirements, and then transmits the encoded data to a remote device. The remote device receives and decodes the encoded data, places the data into a data buffer, and uses the data to control at least one motion servo motor and/or provide data to a speech synthesizer. During a second time period, the remote device continues to operate on the data in the data buffer while formulating a response message based on the status of at least one sensor device, encoding the response message, and transmitting the encoded response message to the link master controller. In response to receiving the encoded response message, the link master controller decodes the encoded response message, and provides the response message to the computer system. The computer system responds to the reception of the response data by altering the audio/video presentation in accordance with the response data.

Controller and associated mechanical characters operable for continuously performing received control data while engaging in bidirectional communications over a single communications channel

A minimal rebuild system and process for minimizing rebuilding of a user's programming project analyzes and records dependencies of object code files compiled in a previous build of the project on classes declared in header files. When rebuilding the project, the system detects and records changes made to the classes and header files since the project was last built. The system then determines whether to recompile the object code files from their respective source code files by comparing the recorded dependencies and changes. If an object code file's dependencies do not intersect the changes, recompiling of the object code file can be omitted. The minimal rebuild system utilizes an approximate representation of the dependencies to yield an efficient system while ensuring that the project is correctly rebuilt.

Compiler and method for avoiding unnecessary recompilation

A mechanism for locating and calling an appropriate member function to process a message or command in an event-based system is provided. An object data structure contains data members and a pointer to a virtual function table. The virtual function table contains pointers to member functions associated with the object. The virtual function table contains a pointer to a member function that returns the address of a message map. The message map contains two entries: a pointer to a base message map and a pointer to an array of message map entries. The array of message map entries contains the addresses and parameters of member functions. A default window procedure member function searches the array of message map entries to locate a desired member function. If the desired member function is not located in the array of message map entries for the derived class, then the window procedure member function searches the array of message map entries for the base class of the derived class.

Method and system for locating an inherited virtual function member of a

A method and system for allowing an interrupted computer program to detect the occurrence of an interrupt. In a preferred embodiment, a system according to the present invention allows an Intel 80286-compatible based computer program executing in real mode to detect the occurrence of an interrupt during the execution of a set of instructions. According to a preferred method of the present invention, the LOADALL instruction is used to load the code segment selector with the segment address of the code in the interrupted routine to be executed upon return from an interrupt and to load the code segment base address with the segment base address of the set of instruction during whose execution interrupt is to be detected. A preferred method then executes the set of instructions. Upon occurrence of an interrrupt, the preferred method saves the value in the code segment selector and executes an interrupt routine. Upon return from the interrupt routine, a preferred method loads the code segment base address based on the saved code segment value so that the interrupted routine resumes execution at an instruction other than the interrupted instruction. The methods of the present invention allow a program executing in real mode to access data in extended memory with interrupts enabled.

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Kirkland, WA, United States of America

Scott A Randell