[HomeBrew] Station Control via PC Serial Port

Thu, 17 Jan 2002 09:42:54 -0800

Deon,

There are at least 3 ways to get in to this.

The serial port offer 3 outputs control pins and 4 input control pins.
The November 2001 Nuts and Volts shows a circuit to convert the
serial port TTL or parallel port TTL levels to levels that will operate
relays.

The parallel port offers 9 out puts (8 data and a strobe) you can use the
port to strobe data into a latch / buffer and do many bit of logic. The
port
also will accept 4 bits of data back in (out of paper, printer ready, and
two more I do not remember off hand.

You can control all these ports from basic under dos.
You can not do this in a windows program because windows grabs
all the port devices and the applications running in a DOS window on
top of windows do not know their in a DOS window. The program
tries to grab the hardware address itself instead of say Windows will
you please pass this bit to the hardware.

There are some very nice plug in control cards.
These are inexpensive. Some are relay control on the card.
Most come with a software package and work in windows very well.
Find a copy of Circuit Cellar and look into there adds.
there are some 29.95 cards with software and how to book.

You may want to go the plug and play card route because
of the windows integration level it provides. How many mice
and monitors do we want to inflict on the control operator?

These add in card vendors offer software that is windows integrated
and mouse orientated.

You can plug in the control card and tailor the window with icons
like web page buttons. Click on click off. and feed back displays
that show metered values (rotor antenna direction) you can
click turn left button and watch feed back display rotate the compass
on the screen display.

Pioneer adds from circuit cellar come to mind.

National instruments offers a real top end ($$$$$) set of cards and
software.

Roger.

                    "Deon Erwin"                                                                                          
                    <[email protected]>             To:     "Homebrew Reflector" <[email protected]>                   
                    Sent by:                    cc:                                                                       
                    homebrew-admin@mailm        Subject:     [HomeBrew] Station Control via PC Serial Port                
                    an.qth.net                                                                                            

                    01/16/2002 02:11 PM                                                                                   
                    Please respond to                                                                                     
                    homebrew                                                                                              

A handicapped Ham sucessfully controls his radio with his PC, but has the
following problems:

1.  He is physically unable to operate switches and other station
equipment.
A small program running in the background in Win 95/98 to switch relays and
transistors via the serial port, will be ideal to select antennas and
switch
equipment.

2..  He also requires a program to control his antenna rotator.  Perhaps
via
a serial port too.

Can anyone direct me to the solutions?

Thanks
Deon ZR1DQ

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