Anyone interested in serial controlled Relay/Input card? - Page 3

ESLogix · 08-12-2004, 10:25 PM

sounds cool, I had thought about working on a similar project if not for lack of time...

darkhalo · 08-12-2004, 11:18 PM

im down. although im just a lowely 2nd year EE student and i haven't taken EE classes yet, ill do my best.

Danceheaven · 08-13-2004, 09:19 AM

Quote: Originally Posted by Ricky327

Have you got the link or info about this 72 I/O card?

I need to find out more whats the best way to get the digital and analog inputs. Like the input sensitivity of the analog inputs. And the pull-up/pull-down of the digital inputs...I may also set the trigger voltage at 6V. The relay card Im working on should work with standard car relays up to 40A and are to be placed offboard as adons.

Ill love to get all this done on USB in the future.

USB would be much better as RS232 9 pin cmm ports are been phased out! and USB is the way to go, my mate showed me a great Dev kit he picked up, all usb 1.1/ 2.0 etc, it has ADC - DAC the lot cant remember how many i will get more info from him soon its a great find and only £70, yep im in the uk... i will upload the pdf for my 72 i/o card and pm u the link soon cheers mate

Danceheaven · 08-13-2004, 09:20 AM

Quote: Originally Posted by Ricky327

Have you got the link or info about this 72 I/O card?

I need to find out more whats the best way to get the digital and analog inputs. Like the input sensitivity of the analog inputs. And the pull-up/pull-down of the digital inputs...I may also set the trigger voltage at 6V. The relay card Im working on should work with standard car relays up to 40A and are to be placed offboard as adons.

Ill love to get all this done on USB in the future.

USB would be much better as RS232 9 pin comm ports and parrallel ports are been phased out! and USB is the way to go, do suppose you know if a USB to Serial converter will suffice do you? my mate showed me a great Dev kit he picked up, all usb 1.1/ 2.0 etc, it has ADC - DAC the lot cant remember how many i will get more info from him soon its a great find and only £70, yep im in the uk... i will upload the pdf for my 72 i/o card and pm u the link soon cheers mate

Ricky327 · 08-13-2004, 10:18 AM

Yes you are right and Ill love to go USB.

I have checked the microchip site and they have :

PIC16F745 : 22 I/O, 5 8-bit ADC, USB for $2.86
PIC16F765 : 33 I/O, 8 8-bit ADC, USB for $3.42

Those 2 chips are ideal for car PC but unfortunately they are only available in OTP

I dont have a proper development tools to emulate it and cant afford to blow $2.86 each time I wanna change a bit in the code. It may also save me a 5V regulator in the design.

Adding a Serial-USB converter should work but they cost abit, about £25 from maplins.

The thing is Im not even too sure how the USB device can be controlled through windows. If theres a development apps that can send and receive data from the USB device then atleast I can look into it...if you know something please do let me know.

In the mean time I guess the serial version will have to do for now. At least its simple to control via hyperterminal. Unless I can program the PIC such that it also emulate a comport via USB

ESLogix · 08-13-2004, 12:48 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by Ricky327

Yes you are right and Ill love to go USB.

I have checked the microchip site and they have :

PIC16F745 : 22 I/O, 5 8-bit ADC, USB for $2.86
PIC16F765 : 33 I/O, 8 8-bit ADC, USB for $3.42

Those 2 chips are ideal for car PC but unfortunately they are only available in OTP

I dont have a proper development tools to emulate it and cant afford to blow $2.86 each time I wanna change a bit in the code. It may also save me a 5V regulator in the design.

Adding a Serial-USB converter should work but they cost abit, about £25 from maplins.

The thing is Im not even too sure how the USB device can be controlled through windows. If theres a development apps that can send and receive data from the USB device then atleast I can look into it...if you know something please do let me know.

In the mean time I guess the serial version will have to do for now. At least its simple to control via hyperterminal. Unless I can program the PIC such that it also emulate a comport via USB

yea thats the problem with microchip and USB, i have a few 745 and 765 but I never bothered with them becuase I dont have any of the UV erasable ones since they are too expensive...
microchip is supposed to have a few 18F USB but they still have not been released, rumor is they will be out by the end of the year.
I know a bunch of 8051 varients support hardware USB
serial is so much easier to develop with though...

Curiosity · 08-14-2004, 02:03 AM

Have you thought about anything like custom commands? Like say if it were constantly powered even when the PC is off and it could store commands in RAM like "if X goes high, wait Y seconds, set Z high" in a small array like 32 bits per command, then you could have it turn the PC on if the doors are unlocked or a timed SDC. Things like that. It would have to constantly loop monitoring the I/O pins and use a clock for timing, but I think it could be useful for many applications and make it really flexible.

Yuriy · 08-14-2004, 02:17 AM

I am very interested! I'd love to buy a few! Just wondering whether you could write a small plugin for "Girder" software - it would be really cool because then we could just control the relays with any device (i.e. remote, keyboard, mouse, voice, OS events, etc.) without any special software. 8 relays would be a bomb, man! I'd love to be able to start my carputer with ignition and standby it when it's off! And I'd love the ability to control windows with my remote. I could even go as far as to make presets to window position so that I could just press a button and my windows would auto-adjust. You can do all that with Girder software. Yeah, that would be cool if I won't have to spend $100 on a relay board

Ricky327 · 08-14-2004, 10:57 AM

Quote: Originally Posted by Curiosity

Have you thought about anything like custom commands? Like say if it were constantly powered even when the PC is off and it could store commands in RAM like "if X goes high, wait Y seconds, set Z high" in a small array like 32 bits per command, then you could have it turn the PC on if the doors are unlocked or a timed SDC. Things like that. It would have to constantly loop monitoring the I/O pins and use a clock for timing, but I think it could be useful for many applications and make it really flexible.

Yes I have been thinking about something along the line but not fully programmable as you described. My thought is to have a built in startup/shutdown controller as well as low voltage shutdown and PSU relay controlled, used for shutting the invert/PSU off completely. I have already got the code for it from the previous project. Your idea is just great...just a matter of including it in the PIC code. Ill look in to it.

Damn I need more I/Os now...Please stop giving me more great ideas, its making me drool

kingtut · 08-14-2004, 12:46 PM

Ricky, "no more ideas"

, you mean you are not going to give me a button wherby if pressed the windows go up and the AC kicks in at a preset temp! oh....well....

Danceheaven · 08-14-2004, 01:40 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by kingtut

Ricky, "no more ideas"

, you mean you are not going to give me a button wherby if pressed the windows go up and the AC kicks in at a preset temp! oh....well....

That will be all based on the software controlling the card plus the actual wiring and where it connects too, also dont forget that just because the card has 8 relays doesnt mean 8 outputs think of it more or 8x8 = 64 if the card can source enough current then we could have 64 outputs, am i right in saying this ricky?
Also if this is the case then i would fit a 8 way connector on the card that is connected to the drive circuitry before the relays that way we could just use the signal lines rather than relay outputs, you could fit jumpers to enable the relay outputs or diable them for example

TruckinMP3 · 08-14-2004, 01:52 PM

Is it ready? Would someone build them that I could purchase? What OS would the software work on?

Thanks

Jeep · 08-14-2004, 01:56 PM

Check this controler/relay: http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/show...4&postcount=55

god_of_cpu · 08-14-2004, 03:25 PM

Whenever this does get done, as Ricky mentioned before, I'll be writing an open source windows dll plugin for it in C++ that can be called from any language. I already have a plugin format for relay controls that I used for a parallel port relay control for the output portion and is a super set of the girder plugin format, so it will be compatible with girder.

The plugin will be just a light wrapper over the actual hardware functions, it will be up to the calling program to implement the more specific things like synchronized setting off of multiple relays.

I will also release a windows service type of program that can run in the background and allow more direct access to the device without writing code.

I am also writing a commercial software program. This is what the plugin format was initially made for. The program allows you to map each relay to a relay set, when the relay set is triggered, it will set each relay to either off or on, whichever you specify, and keep at that state until a user spedified timeout for each relay is reached or you manually reset the relay set. The program will also use girder plugins, so the input portion of this device can be used to trigger events in the program.

Curiosity · 08-14-2004, 03:50 PM

Oh! I have another idea. Can you add an option to make it send like a 1 or 2 byte status report when an I/O changes state? I think it would give it a faster response time and cut down on traffic. Polling is outdated IMO. I'm really making this complicated huh?