Anyone interested in serial controlled Relay/Input card? - Page 9

Ricky327 · 10-28-2004, 11:14 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by lummox

No, it will be grounded to the chassis, not dirrectly to the main battery. This shouldn't be a problem though as the differences will be neglegable (sp?), should it?

Thats all fine then

Quote: Originally Posted by lez

123456horn would briefly sound horn if incoming number was known.(handy for finding car in car parks believe me!)

Yeah

Quote: Originally Posted by mushin

Hmm, the PIC. I'm pretty sure my office has PIC programmers of various sorts (and the engineers to help me out

), so I can probably get that sorted out once you make the code available, but that does seem like it'd be an issue for many people.

PIC programmer can be built quite cheaply a few $. There are many circuit and S/W floating around the internet...so that might solve the problems other poeple may have.

mushin · 10-28-2004, 11:20 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by kiltjim

We'd need to find a reasonable PCB printing company, and figure on how much the individual boards would be. If I can get access a PIC programmer, I would bump off as many as needed. Then we'd be good to go.

barebonespcb.com, posted in another thread, looks pretty good. At 10 units, the unit price would be $7.90.

pimpJ · 10-28-2004, 11:26 PM

I didn't have time to read through this monstrous thread yet, but from what I understand, there would be a *much* cheaper alternative to phidgets (w/ limited capabilities). is this correct ?

I'll read through the posts about the phone thing, that sounds interesting

all in all : consider me interested

kiltjim · 10-28-2004, 11:31 PM

um... wow. I just did a very topical search for PIC programmers that are compatible with the PIC16F870, and it looks to me, that if somebody needs these programmed, you could either build it yourself, and use freeware, or I may just throw one of these together, and bump off as many as needed.

If a group buy does get put together, I would not have much against putting these together.

kiltjim · 10-28-2004, 11:33 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by pimpJ

I didn't have time to read through this monstrous thread yet, but from what I understand, there would be a *much* cheaper alternative to phidgets (w/ limited capabilities). is this correct ?

It seems like with a little work, these may be the ticket. MUCH cheaper than a phidget. And according to Ricky327, these are going to be much better.

mushin · 10-28-2004, 11:36 PM

Second that "wow". Looks pretty easy to build a programmer. And here I was imagining expensive specialized equipment and such

. Sweet.

Ricky327 · 10-28-2004, 11:44 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by kiltjim

Does the card output "$STATUS : ~~~~", and if so, how often?
If not, is the response to a serial sent comment "10~~~,~~~,3FF,100,23A

In other words:
Does the computer have to send $STATUS, and wait for a response, or does the card automatically send this, and if so what is the format coming out of the card?

Ok let me briefly show you what happen :

At first power up, the board will display the card info. Software version, Hardware version, Card format 8/8/3...etc. Can be useful to autoconfigure the windows app.

Sending a $RELAY command change one or all 8 relay states depending on the issued command. The board will then activate or deactivate a relay (or change all RELAY pattern)

Immediately after chaging the relay states the card then send a message :

"$STATUS : 10100101...etc"

To show the new state of the 8 relays. On every $RELAY command the new state is shown.

Sending "$STATUS" to the board will make the board continuosly send out all its state. The relay, digital and the ADC reading are all shown in one sentence....so you get something like:

$STATUS : 10010011,00000001,3FF,1FF,020
$STATUS : 10010011,00000010,3FF,1FF,020
$STATUS : 10010011,00000100,3FF,1FF,020
$STATUS : 10010011,00001000,000,000,000

...etc This card status is updated at a rate of 200Hz

You can see how the 8 digital inputs are changing each time. The relays stayed at "10010011". On the last sentence the ADC2, ADC1, ADC0 all showing a reading of ZERO VOLTS=000, 16V=3FF, 1FF=8V

Sending an "ESC" character to the board will stop the continuosly sending of the STATUS of the board.

I think it should be clearer now...it can be hard to understand at first but it is fairly straight forward.

So its like this :

$STATUS : RRRRRRRR,DDDDDDDD,ADC2,ADC1,ADC0
R = RELAY state, 1 = ON, 0 = OFF the first R is RELAY 7 and the last R is RELAY 0

D = DIGITAL INPUTS state, 1 = HIGH, 0= LOW

ADC2,ADC1,ADC0 are the reading of the analog inputs, 10BIT presented in HEX.

I hope im not confusing you...but let me finalise the command set then I can draw/write/explain how everthing works

kiltjim · 10-28-2004, 11:45 PM

I just priced making your own programmer from Mouser.com

The most expensive thing on my list, other than stuff you can pick up at the shack, Opto-isolators, $0.38

Yeah, I'll be making one myself...

kiltjim · 10-28-2004, 11:49 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by Ricky327

I hope im not confusing you...but let me finalise the command set then I can draw/write/explain how everthing works

No, thats exactly what I was hoping for. I'm trying to work out this software design, and without having the board, I don't know what to expect from it. But I have some things on paper...I mean, on the screen, I mean...worked out.

Ricky327 · 10-28-2004, 11:54 PM

I think a demo can be done using "LABVIEW"

It got some really cool templates such oscilloscope, graph, voltmeter, toggle switches, LEDs etc

masch · 10-29-2004, 12:35 AM

Okay I've been wanting to do this, but never really understood electronics.

lez · 10-29-2004, 07:39 AM

slightly off topic here but connected aswell, in this phone/board/alarm app I am on with, in vb6, on receipt of a standard sms, ie 'dinners ready big boy' it pops up a msgbox that shows the sms, and I click cancle to acknoledge that I have read it, with me so far?

Well I start my app before mediacar, so mediacar is on top, but the msgbox dont appear as mediacar is on top....

Can I force a msgbox to be super on top?
can I somehow manipulate mediacars display to send it back while the msg box is displayed, then bring it back on top after I click the msgbox cancle button?

I know in vb you can send keypresses etc to another apps window, canb I not manipulate another app window properties ie mediacar.visible=false?

the car phone alarm is now coming on fine, just need some time off work to get going faster and change all the lpt-relay board commands to serial ones

kiltjim · 10-29-2004, 10:47 AM

Quote: Originally Posted by Ricky327

I think a demo can be done using "LABVIEW"

It got some really cool templates such oscilloscope, graph, voltmeter, toggle switches, LEDs etc

Do you mean I could simulate the board? Or that I could simlulate the software talking to the board?

Anyway, I am just trying to work out how I will handle sending recieving from the board. I have some of the basics worked out. Such as, I can send and recieve data over the serial port, settings is set up, I just have to change some things around, since my prototype from before used slightly different communication structure. And of course, didn't do nearly as much!

Ricky327 · 10-29-2004, 04:43 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by lez

the car phone alarm is now coming on fine, just need some time off work to get going faster and change all the lpt-relay board commands to serial ones

...

I think The VB stuff will need to be asked elsewhere

Quote: Originally Posted by kiltjim

Do you mean I could simulate the board? Or that I could simlulate the software talking to the board?

No I meant simulate the control panel that control the board

kiltjim · 10-30-2004, 06:32 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by Ricky327

No I meant simulate the control panel that control the board

Oh, I am just coding the software in VB.NET. It recieves data over the serial port, and send data when a button is pressed, or when a timer checks on the board. Hopefully when I get this thing built, I will just to tweak some timing, change some basic settings, and then release it to the world.

I am now working on the analog input, just a basic hex converter, that will output the data to the screen. But I have to make it look respectable, and the problem will be to get the timing down. But that will have to wait for the board.