[chbot] Anybody understand rs422 enough to decode this for me?

[andrew dean]

There are some interactive floor tiles used for games where people run around as the floor changes colours, avoiding red, etc.  In our latest escape room we have a room where it would be great to have controllable coloured floor tiles that can sense when people are standing on them.  I sent information requests to dozens of manufacturers and this is the closest thing I got that seems to make sense, only, I don’t think I really get it.

The floor tiles seem to use rs422 to send color commands, with each tablet reading their own data like a ws2811.  That kinda made sense to me, but the return data did not.  How would all the tiles send back a single serial string with all of their “stepped on” status without some kind of controller collecting all the data?    What is your best guess as to what they are saying and how it would/should work?

My end goal would be to bridge the data to mqtt, but I’ll need to figure out what their hardware does in order to figure out if I can bridge it or not.

Can anybody help?  Does it sound to you like you fire off FFFF then the rgb values in order to set the tile colours.  How would getting the pressed data from the tiles work?  (Out of 20 manufacturers, this is the closest to a meaningful communication I’ve had, so I’m trying to decipher it as much as possible before asking followup questions.

Here’s the protocol document:
https://devlincross.co.uk/photos/protocol.png

Thanks for any help!
-Andrew