Patent ID: 8819162

Claim:
A data communications system in an electrically noisy environment, comprising: a plurality of communication devices, said communication devices including a host and a number N of clients, N greater than or equal to 1, communicated to said host using a daisy-chain loop wherein said daisy-chain loop originates at a first location on said host and terminates at a second location on said host and wherein said daisy chain-loop comprises said number N+1 of conductor segments, each particular one conductor segment of said daisy-chain loop communicating an upstream communications device to a downstream communications device; said host including a serial communications master initiating a serial transmission of a data packet to a first downstream client, said data packet including a plurality of bytes, a first subset of said plurality of bytes including an address portion of said data packet and a second subset of said plurality of bytes including a payload portion, said data packet having a start-of-packet identifier defined by a predetermined period of signal inactivity; and each said client including a serial communications servant receiving said data packet from a particular upstream communications device as a received data packet and retransmits said data packet to a particular downstream communications device as a retransmitted data packet, an X of N client receiving from an X−1 client and retransmitting to an X+1 client wherein said X=1 client receives said received data packet from said host and wherein said Nth client retransmits said retransmitted data packet to said host, said data packet having a transit time through said daisy-chain loop from a beginning of said transmission of said data packet from said host to a completion of said retransmission of said data packet from said Nth client to said host, said predetermined period of signal inactivity pre-established as less than said transit time, wherein each said serial communications servant includes a receiver to receive a transmission having an initial period of signal inactivity and a subsequent period of signal activity, and a comparator comparing said initial period of signal inactivity to said predetermined period of signal inactivity, said serial communications servant including a decoder decoding said transmission into a decoded address portion when said initial period of signal inactivity indicates, responsive to said comparison, that said subsequent period of signal activity includes said data packet.