Talk to computers?

[Gregory L. Hansen]

I've been thinking of playing around with computer-controlled systems.
Just for funsies, at least at first. E.g. a robot, or a data acquisition
system for a pendulum experiment. But I was thinking at first of a motor
that spins something, as a toy to play with control systems. So to sum
up my technical demands-- pretty light, I think.

I think I can figure out AD/DA, and I know there are chips that take much
of the work out of that if I don't want to roll my own. But what are
some options for simply moving digital signals to and from the real
world? I'd rather use something like USB than a sound card, but I
don't know how involved that is from the hardware perspective, or what
might be available to ease it.

--
"Usenet is like a herd of performing elephants with diarrhea -- massive,
difficult to redirect, awe-inspiring, entertaining, and a source of
mind-boggling amounts of excrement when you least expect it. "
-- Gene Spafford, 1992

 

[kmaryan@gmail.com]

Take a look at PIC microcontrollers, www.microchip.com. They have a
huge following and many user sites describing how to program them and
how to interface with them. In general, you can talk to them over a
serial port, for which you can find software here or there or roll your
own.

Chris

 

[Chris]

If you'd like to have something that costs less and can work
cross-platform, how about the GP-3 PC I/O Board Kit, which goes for
less than $50.00 and operates from a serial port. It has 8 general
purpose I/O lines, 5 10-bit A-D inputs, and the capability for PWM
output (which you can use to make a good 8 or 9-bit analog output with
an op amp).

It uses the serial port, and while the drivers are Window$-centric, you
can communicate through your serial port with any programming language,
even good ol' QBasic. Interface is easy. The GP-3 PC I/O Board Kit is
based on a PIC, which should delight those to whom the PIC is the
answer to everything.
http://www.awce.com/gp3.htm

Glad to be of help
Chris

 

[Mike Fields]

--
"Usenet is like a herd of performing elephants with diarrhea --
massive,
difficult to redirect, awe-inspiring, entertaining, and a source of
mind-boggling amounts of excrement when you least expect it. "
-- Gene Spafford, 1992

This also applies to teenagers !!

I think I just dated myself -- I remember when Gene used to post
all the time back then.

 

[Rich Grise]

On Wed, 02 Feb 2005 18:51:35 +0000, Gregory L. Hansen wrote:

Chris <cfoley1064@yahoo.com> wrote:
Gregory L. Hansen wrote:
I've been thinking of playing around with computer-controlled
systems.
....
http://www.labjack.com/labjack_u12.html
They go at $119 USD ea. in single quantities.

Looks very interesting. $119 is more than I had in mind, but I know from
experience that although electronics are cheap, do-it-yourself tends to
wind up costing more than I expect when I've bought the connectors,
switches, and so on. And even personal time is worth something.

I suppose it's too much to hope for Linux or Mac drivers. The Linux crowd
might have something, depending on how widely used the product is.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=linux+pc+port+drivers

Have Fun!
Rich

 

[Clifford Heath]

January Circuit Cellar magazine had a project based on the work of
Igor Cesko (http://www.cesko.host.sk/) which implements USB 1.1 in
software in a cheap AVR microprocessor, either an ATmega8 or a
AT90S2313.

This would be a good option, as it connects the uC directly to USB
and powers it too, giving you the ability to customise the software
load in the AVR to do specialised (rapid) things, but still get
started with Windows drivers to flip port pins at a lower rate.
The AVR is a pretty easy uC to get started with, and there are
enough different kinds that you can use one of the family for almost
any project. You'd probably not need to learn another architecture
for a number of years.