USB hobby development kits

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In days of yore... One could purchase a little box that would plug into a serial or parallel port for about £25, that would let you program control for LEDs and little electric motors... I miss being able to play with such toys... Does anyone know of any cheap USB interfaces that fill this role?

Cheers!

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I'm thinking more along the lines of this: http://linuxk8055.free.fr/ but these boards are not cheap

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Those are the jobbies! If I'm paying that sort of money I want something more customisable... And if I have to build the damn thing myself then I want more options than that... No MacOS driver... And only a crappy 3rd party Linux driver...

I'm begining to think a custom made board and an FPGA might be a better solution!

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Looking at the schematics of this thing seems it's built around a PIC16c745... should be simple enough to build my own...

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http://www.alanmacek.com/usb/

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All interesting stuff guys! But all I want to make is a physical interface with my laptop which from software would allow me to turn on LEDs and little electric motors, and solonoids... And also receive input from push buttons, sliders, dials etc...

Perhaps to contol some children's toys etc... So all I really need is some way to connect these physical devices to the laptop... The laptop in question only has USB and Firewire interfaces... So all I need is some way to control these via the USB, and the PIC16c745 is cheap ($4 per unit in small quantities), and registeres as a USB HID by default, I don't need anything like a fully automated microcontroler

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The difference is that a bare PIC requires board and programming by you, and also a programmer. Buying a ready made product gets you past the first part of development, and into applications. I'm guessing that if you buy an Arduino, it would come with a boot loader already in the start of program memory, as well as give you access to a bunch of applications examples. I haven't looked into it though. Also, I think the Atmega is probably a simpler architecture for C development. It has been a really long time since I looked into this, though. My PIC work has all been in assembly, which can be a hassle.

You may also consider a USB to parallel port adapter. If it is only a few switching channels, that would probably be sufficient. You may still need to buffer the outputs though. Not sure about that.

For a long term project I think the PIC is the way to go... but for a quick proof of concept... using a USB->Parallel might be suitable... The only downside being the lack of I/O of the Parallel port... I will search now and see what is available

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This site has some info...

http://www.epanorama.net/circuits/parallel_output.html#usbnotes

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Actually I think I have found a pretty good device here: http://www.kadtronix.com/usbdacq.htm

But this one is also built around the good old PIC16c745... :-)

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Ohhh!!! found a good one here!!! I might see about getting one

http://www.usbmicro.com/odn/index.html



-Edit- And for $30... this looks like a real winner!!! http://www.circuitgizmos.com/products/cgu421/cgu421.shtml

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I found an inexpensive FPGA and USB microcontroller if you decide to go this path:

http://www.digilentinc.com/
http://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Detail.cfm?NavTop=2&NavSub=457&Prod=BASYS

Not a bad price... But not really what I need, as I want something like this:



LEDs/Buttons/Sensors/Motors<------USB----->Computer<----USB---->Sensors/LEDs

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Not a bad price... But not really what I need, as I want something like this:



LEDs/Buttons/Sensors/Motors<------USB----->Computer<----USB---->Sensors/LEDs

After trying out a few various PIC systems... The Arduino Duemilanove has proven to be cheap and quite brilliant! The development software is all C++, which does make life easier after struggling with PIC asm(it's not hard just a bit tedious after spending a few nights with it)...

I see Arduino have have just released a new board called the "UNO"... I might have to get one... I've found a new love