Curiosity: computer and electronics

[cheawick]

I was just wondering if anyone has fiddled with combining their computer coding to manipulate some form of seperate electronic device? Not that it is revelant to anything, but I was trying to figure out how I could make a strobe light flash to a recorded lightening pattern. As I said, just an idle curiosity and wondering what other folks here have played with.

[ender]

Yes, I have dabbled in such things. Actually, right now I am switching the power to a camera on and off by toggling a handshaking line on a serial port that switches a relay (indirectly using a transistor, of course). This will eventually be ported to the NSLU2 (http://www.nslu2-linux.org) where I will control the relay using a GPIO pin that was originally used for driving an LED.

In the past I have done other things as well, most of them using the serial port, however I have dabbled in parallel port stuff as well.

As far as your strobe light, it should not be hard, as long as there is some way to control when it 'strobes.' I do not know much about strobe lights, but there should be some way to trigger it.

Anyway, that is my $.02, take it how you want.

-Ted

[sde]

I really wanted to do this, but got side tracked. One thing I did figure out is that linux is the tool for this type of fun. Since windows 98, you are required to use a driver to communicate out the paralell port. In linux, you don't need the driver and can communicate directly to it.

I dropped the ball on this project. I really wanted to put some of my programming skills to use to make things in real life do something .. I'd be interested to hear about any progress on these types of projects.

[cheawick]

Hey, great! I might give it a real try since there is actual interest. Good to know about the linux before I started to beat myself senseless using winblows.

[idx]

I really wanted to put some of my programming skills to use to make things in real life do something

Same here. Been thinking about various projects based on a device with N LED's that you could control via the PC. Then have various scripts do something and change the LED based on your needs. eg: a log file has something in it.. Flash LED 5.. New email, flash #2. System low on disk space, flash all of them.. etc..

I a few commercial products along the email checking lines, but it was USB and windows-only. What fun is that?

This originally started by torking on an i-opener then turning on the green LED's at the top when I had email. (simple perl pop checker)

Semi-related: http://www.soekris.com/ These mini boards look pretty slick. Might be interesting to use them in the mix. ( http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/bsd/2004...y_Daemons.html )

-r

[ender]

We use some of the soekris equipment here at work. We used a couple of their boards to make rudementary DHCP/DNS servers. They work well, although their original purpose was cancelled, so we were unable to use them how we'd planned. The boards are kind of expensive for what they allow though. If you really want an embedded system that you can tinker with, I would highly recommend the NSLU2.

Hope this helps anyone out there...

-Ted

[cheawick]

Hmm... What exactly is NSLU2?

[ender]

The NSLU2 is a product put out by Linksys that was originally intended to be a network filesystem for windows systems. The idea is that you plug in an external USB harddrive and it shares it on the network as a windows share. One curious fellow out there, however, realized that it ran Linux on it, and there the hacking began. Today they have their own custom firmware and 2.6.9 kernel that almost turns it into an $80 Strong-ARM development system. The soekris cost around $150-$300 by comparison.

Hope this helps!

-Ted

[cheawick]

Mmm. That does sound rather tasty. Guess I haven't been looking at hardware very much lately. Thanks!

[doomtroll]

actually I have been looking into EPROM programming

I know Almost no code at the moment...but you shouold be able to find kits for programming such things in almost ANY electronics Mag...Nuts & Volts I would recommned