[HomeBrew] Station Control via PC Serial Port

Sun, 20 Jan 2002 02:55:02 +0200

Hi Roger

I am familiar with Circuit Cellar products and other commercial plug-in
cards.  The problem is that our poor exchange rate places US products beyond
the reach of most people in South Africa, particularly this handicapped Ham.
We end up paying about $350 for a $30 item (if I could make a direct
comparison).

I am hoping that someone can direct me to an article that appeared in a
magazine.

Thank you for your effort.

Regards
Deon ZR1DQ

----- Original Message -----
From: Roger L Ruszkowski <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Cc: Homebrew Reflector <[email protected]>;
<[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, January 17, 2002 7:42 PM
Subject: Re: [HomeBrew] Station Control via PC Serial Port

|
| 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
|
|
| _______________________________________________
| HomeBrew mailing list
| [email protected]
| http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/homebrew
|
|
|
|
| _______________________________________________
| HomeBrew mailing list
| [email protected]
| http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/homebrew
|