USB hobby development kits

[bloodline]

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!

[davideo]

I thought I saw some in the CPC catalouge the other week but can't be sure.

Have a look on their website. Might not be cheap though :-(

Dave G

[GadgetMaster]

Is this the type of thing you are talking about?

http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=37172

...

[bloodline]

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

[GadgetMaster]

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

I don't know what the normal prices are for these kind of things but here is a UK distributor selling them.

http://www.quasarelectronics.com/velleman/k8055-usb-experiment-interface-board-kit.htm £38.95

http://www.quasarelectronics.com/velleman/k8061-extended-usb-interface-board-kit.htm £99.95

[bloodline]

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!

[bloodline]

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

[bloodline]

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

[ChuckT]

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!

I've been researching Microcontrollers and I'm still compliling information.  What brand of microcontrollers are you looking at?  Just Microchip?

I know that if you want it with an FPGA, the price goes up.

I saw what looks like a good teaching tool.  You might want to look at the STM32Circle (Risc Based).

I know that some of the foreign engineers in India and the far east like the AtMega and Adruino.

It is development like this that will be the future of computers so I would ask the users here if they would *heavily* support a homebrew developer section for microcontrollers because I have a need for documents and I would share because the harder part is getting developer's information (data sheets) for things like SD cards but I found some.  I have a Parallax Propeller Demo board and a book called "Getting Started in Electronics" which was relatively cheap at Radio Shack for $20.  I like the Atom Microcontroller but it is a little more expensive than the Propeller:

http://www.basicmicro.com/

There are microcontrollers which have keyboard and mouse inputs, video output, etc., and there are versions of BASIC which run on them.  Unless you want to reprogram your PC, this is the only other alternative to developing a computer which is what others are using the Microcontrollers for.  Some of them are putting multiple processors together for speed which means each processor would control different functions of the computer.


If you like making things, check out the magazine "Nuts and Volts" and
http://www.sparkfun.com
http://www.nutsvolts.com/

There is also a magazine called "Make" and they have a website as well.

[Oliver]

...I know that some of the foreign engineers in India and the far east like the AtMega and Adruino...

I was going to suggest Arduino as well. Versatile low cost platform, with plenty of modules. I'm pretty sure you can get it in kit form. Lots of suppliers online. Built with Atmega, around C/C++ libraries. Atmega micros are C compiler friendly, and there is a (good I think) free compiler from the manufacturer.

There are peripherals for wireless comms, MIDI, ethernet, LED imaging, ...

I haven't used Arduino, and haven't read much about them, as they don't fit any need of mine. Sounds like a good solution for this, though.

edit - I've used PICs quite a bit in the past. I'm more interested in higher power systems, based on arm and fpga. PICs can be a pain in the arse when projects increase in scale. Arm systems are becoming more affordable, and offer much greater resources. They tend to use more power though. Low resource micros can still be good for large quantity manufacturing, as the cost scales nicely. There are some other really low power micros, which are suitable for some battery operated embedded systems. I'm currently interested in some projects using fpga's and dsps, and arm seems a good brain for the system.

[bloodline]

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

[ChuckT]

If you don't want to run wires, you could build a USB radio:

http://www.elektor.com/products/kits-modules/kits-(-7x)/usb-radio-terminal-(071125-71).984242.lynkx

[Oliver]

...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

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.

[bloodline]

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

[bloodline]

This site has some info...

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