Does any one know of where I might find a GPO only board? I am looking for a board that does exactly what the GPO's on the MO displays do, but I do not have need for an expensive display.
Does any one know if I can just use a serial port? how would I program that? I have heard of this being done, but know nothing about it. Please help.
Thank you.
Knoj[/b]
GPO only board?
Well, a parallel port would be so much simpler.
You can look at a parallel port as 8 GPOs if you want, and probelm solved. It would be cleaner to use a driver IC, like an octal buffer, as the interface, so you don't damage the motherboard's port circuitry.
I don't know how you could do it on a serial port without some microcontroller in the mix.
Anyway, in parallel, if you can figure out a way in software to write a word to the parallel port, you have your GPO control software. In *NIX it's easy as falling over, in Windoze it will take a little more effort.
You can look at a parallel port as 8 GPOs if you want, and probelm solved. It would be cleaner to use a driver IC, like an octal buffer, as the interface, so you don't damage the motherboard's port circuitry.
I don't know how you could do it on a serial port without some microcontroller in the mix.
Anyway, in parallel, if you can figure out a way in software to write a word to the parallel port, you have your GPO control software. In *NIX it's easy as falling over, in Windoze it will take a little more effort.
Here's sort of the canonical example of what I was just talking about:
http://casemods.pointofnoreturn.org/cpumeter/
http://casemods.pointofnoreturn.org/cpumeter/
For more info try http://www.angelfire.com/mb/lalim/images/parallel.htm but as to doing this via RS232 would require a lot more work.
Thanks guys!
Wow, help from the both of you guys! Who could have asked for anything better? Thank you so much. I am in luck, as I was planning on using some relays to actually controll what I needed, as some of the devices will be run off of wall power, I just needed a small voltage to switch with. In addition to that, I was concidering giving up one of my serial devices to have this function, but I have a spare parrallel port!
Thank you guys again!
Knoj.
Thank you guys again!
Knoj.
Damn,
After looking at the link that Linear posted more, I have realized that I wan that too! Crap, now what do I do? Now I have to decide which is more important, or I have to write my own program... Well, it looks like I will have to make the choice now, because writing my own will take a large bit of my time, expecially since I am not an expert programmer by any means! Thank you both again! I am very excited about both ideas!
Knoj.
After looking at the link that Linear posted more, I have realized that I wan that too! Crap, now what do I do? Now I have to decide which is more important, or I have to write my own program... Well, it looks like I will have to make the choice now, because writing my own will take a large bit of my time, expecially since I am not an expert programmer by any means! Thank you both again! I am very excited about both ideas!
Knoj.