On Tue, Jun 26, 2007 at 02:18:38AM +0100, Ben Hutchings wrote: > On Sun, 2007-06-24 at 07:15 +0100, Tore Sinding Bekkedal wrote: > > > > " a lamp on the camera which says whether or not the cam's on " > > > I have a pic programmed to do this, when faced with different characters > > > at a serial port. > > > > As we've discussed on IRC, I myself don't see this as the right > > solution. The use of a PIC is needlessly complicated, it introduces > > cabling requirements (although the cabling requirements to make RS-232 > > frames transmit correctly admittedly aren't stringent), there could be > > serial port problems, you can only run one camera per serial port, > > many machines nowadays dont even have serial ports.. > > > I suggest using a single I/O line off the parallel port, as it can be > > programmed to act as an 8-bit general-purpose TTL-level output. > > Many machines don't have parallel ports either. > > I made a half-serious suggestion to Dave that the simplest way to attach > a tally light would be to cannibalise a USB keyboard. (I believe all > the lock lights are programmable.) But that is sick. > > As I said on IRC, Cypress has cheap microcontrollers[1],[2] with > hardware USB and flash, but programming them may be difficult without a > fairly expensive development kit[3]. However there is a fair amount of > documentation on their web site and the only critical thing missing is > the low-level flash programming protocol needed initially. > (Reprogramming can be done under firmware control[4].) It might be > worth asking for documentation of that. >
Alternatively you could look into http://atmel.com/dyn/products/product_card.asp?part_id=4096. AVR8 microcontroller with USB which comes with a simple loader which allows flashing the controller over USB. The AVR8 architecture is supported by gcc-avr. The controller can also be programmed using avrprog. Cheers, Peter (p2). -- Goa is a state of mind _______________________________________________ Debconf-video mailing list [email protected] http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-video
