relaycard for amiga

[zurt]

Hello,

Basically I would recommend you to use The Ultimate Relay Driver II along with some small ARexx scripts capable of turning on and off the relays via TURD's ARexx port, a Cron-like program (CyberCron would do the job) if you want to automatically call these scripts at certain hours and a (homemade) program capable of linking the Amiga and the temperature probe and read its analog value.

Anyway I don't recommend to use two-wire thermistor (PT-100, NTC, PTC or whatever) specially when long lenghts of cable are needed. Three or four-wire sensors are mandatory to deliver an accurate reading of the resistor value, but (in the case of three-wire ones) you should use both potentiometers to do this. One would read the ohmic value due to length, cross section and material of the wires, while the other would read the total ohmic value (cables + sensor). Substracting the first value from the second would deliver you the corrected (real) value of the resistor. Anyway I don't know any software for Amiga capable of doing this off the shelf, that is why I said "a homemade program" above.

Keep in mind the resistors of the Amiga are of 470 KOhm (+-10%) value.

But honestly, apart from experimenting purposes, I won't use the Amiga for such monotonous task. I would go for a inexpensive 220V/110V-powered programmable relay with analog input and RTC such as Schneider Zelio, Siemens Logo!, Omron Zen or similar that would do the job perfectly.

[amyren]

Well, guess what; I'm in touch with Jim and Gene right now. They are having a look, looks like Jim lost the software a while ago; but Gene probably still has it on tape somewhere. If they do find it I'll host it on my site!

Thats good news. If they cant find the software at all, you could ask them if it would be ok to publish the software if you find the software somewhere else. Its a good chance that some Amiga that did buy the software still have a copy available.

btw: Nice website, the amiga museum you have there. Also like the idea of the webshop for used amiga hardware. If just all unused or the amiga things that some even throw away was collected into one big webshop, it would give the amiga classic ever better "afterlife" possibilities.

[amiga4001]

I want to give turd a go,reasons: low budget realycard available software nice with a gui with all my needs.
Only no input but maybe I'll find another hardwareproject for input through another port.
But has anybody been able to register t.u.r.d lately?
The weblink is dead and I get no response from my email to his adress.
I want to buy a key from him.

[amyren]

I want to give turd a go,reasons: low budget realycard available software nice with a gui with all my needs.
Only no input but maybe I'll find another hardwareproject for input through another port.
But has anybody been able to register t.u.r.d lately?
The weblink is dead and I get no response from my email to his adress.
I want to buy a key from him.

I did a quick search and found a couple of parallel relay boards starting from £30 for a kit or £35 for the pre assambled ones. Have you found some cheaper ones available?

And how do you plan to get the temperature reading into the amiga, you need some sort of input device for this?

[amiga4001]

I found one on conrad.ml it's productno:130217-89 priced at 30 euro so about the same..it's a kit though.
Didn't search for the inputproblem yet.
Maybe through the joystick connector?
Does anybody know if the non registered version off t.u.r.d. is limited in some way?
Can't reach the programmer it seems.
Or maybe somebody wants to sell me the complete program registered and all?
Anybody can recommened a type off amiga to play with the relaycard?
Was thinking about a amiga1200 and a small ps2 screen.

[amyren]

..I guess you ment to write conrad.nl (conrad.ml did not go anywhere)

[amyren]

btw: I havent tried t.u.r.d. Is it programmable so that you can set it to eg. if joystick left, then output 1 = on and so on? Does it have an arexx port?

Just thinking that it should be possible to use blitzbasicII to make a small program that does what you want. Not sure if there are a library made for controlling the paralell port.

[amiga4001]

Yes turd has a arexx port.
Indeed it is conrad.nl sorry.

[Castellen]

Just thinking that it should be possible to use blitzbasicII to make a small program that does what you want. Not sure if there are a library made for controlling the paralell port.

It's also possible to to access the parallel and joystick ports directly via Arexx.  Barry Walker has written some good examples here plus other hardware projects which might be of interest here and on Aminet.

Of course it's just as simple to do in C or any other language, port access is essentially reading or writing to a few CIA registers.  Set the data pin directions by writing the appropriate 8-bit value to 0xBFE301 and read/write data pin states by reading/writing to 0xBFE101

An analogue temperature sensor (e.g. LM35) with appropriate DC amplification/scaling could be read via the paddle port 7-bit ADC.  Or you could use 1-wire temperature sensors such as Dallas 1822 for better resolution.  You'd need to implement the Dallas bidirectional serial protocol out of one of the parallel port pins, which would be achievable.

Digital I/O can easily be expanded using shift registers or by multiplexing octal latches.  Hundreds of I/O lines are possible providing you don't need to poll them very quickly.