Successful TPU-ECD replication !

[hartiberlin]

Jason,
if you could use a USB interface chip,
this would be much easier,
as some  PCs don?t have a serial port anymore.

Regards, Stefan.

[BEP]

Two functions I always like are 'scripted' and 'hunt'.

If you don't see what those could mean and haven't written such code before it could be a real chore. The 'hunt' mode requires input from the real world - kind of a SCADA subset.

A good way to make this possible is when you write your code include DDE OLE OPC or whatever hooks into the visual controls. Then folks could write scripts with (Heaven Forbid!) MS Excel.


You may want to throw in some ferrite beads for those USB cables 

[Jdo300]

Jason,
if you could use a USB interface chip,
this would be much easier,
as some  PCs don?t have a serial port anymore.

Regards, Stefan.

Hi Stefan,

I thought about this but I opted to stick with the serial port for two reasons.

1. For the one I'm making for myself, I am using a BASIC Stamp OEM module as the governing microcontroller board because it is small (2" x 2") and includes a serial port which can be used to both program and communicate with the microcontroller. I am using this specifically because the entire controller will be in a 2" cube which can easily fit into the center of most TPUs.

2. Parallax offers a simple USB to Serial adapter that you can plug into the stamp. This saves the time to design the circuits and also makes it easier to send commands to the chip since I won't need to work with any fancy USB drivers. (By the way, I have to use the adapter myself as I don't have a computer with a serial port either).

For those interested, Here's some info on the BASIC Stamp OEM module and the USB to Serial adapter:

http://www.parallax.com/html_pages/products/basicstamps/basic_stamps_oem.asp#oemview
http://www.parallax.com/detail.asp?product_id=28030

God Bless,
Jason O

[Jdo300]

Two functions I always like are 'scripted' and 'hunt'.

If you don't see what those could mean and haven't written such code before it could be a real chore. The 'hunt' mode requires input from the real world - kind of a SCADA subset.

A good way to make this possible is when you write your code include DDE OLE OPC or whatever hooks into the visual controls. Then folks could write scripts with (Heaven Forbid!) MS Excel.


You may want to throw in some ferrite beads for those USB cables 

Hi BEP,

That sounds like a good idea, but like you said, it does sound like quite a chore. I do plan to start a website soon and sell electronics equipment for us garage experimenters so I could save that feature for a later version of the software package. But for now, all i have in mind is a manual control interface, and some kind of frequency sweeping feature. Though I may be able to come up with some sort of primitive scripting language that you can use to control different frequency operations on the unit. Will have to think more about this one.

Thanks for the suggestions!

God Bless,
Jason O

[acerzw]

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