more basic stamp IO

What used to be really nice for special controllers is the OS-9 operating system from Microware (not the Apple Mac version, which was totally different). The boot code can be in ROM -- or the entire OS and application. You can built the application in 6809 assembly language, or with a BASIC-09 incremental compiler, or with a C or Pascal compiler. Once you have it doing what you want, you can burn the entire thing into ROM, and only need RAM for the stack where all transient data lives. You can have it talk to serial or parallel I/O, or to floppy drives or to hard disk drives. I even wirewrapped an interface for and wrote the drivers for an old Calcomp drum plotter for my SWTP 6809 system.

Of course, these days, OS-9 is tailored for the 68000 family of processors, and costs a *lot* more. It is no longer a hobby OS -- instead, it is used for embedded controllers.

Enjoy, DoN.

The current hot thing is the Arduino.

Kevin Gallimore

I just thought of an idea that might work for Basic Stamp users and PIC microcontrollers. Make a board with an Opto22 compatible 50 pin header connected to a PIC microcontroller. Have the board ship with a program in the PIC to receive serial I/O from the Basic Stamp (or any other controller, or even a PC) so the Stamp would use 2 pins and be able to control up to 32 Opto22 I/O. Or, the user could write thier own control program in the PIC if they had an in circuit serial programmer. I would like to use a PIC with more I/O so a LCD display and keypad could be plugged in if desired.

RogerN

Far more capability than what I'm using. But what is arduino software???

My biggest issue is ease of programming. Basic stamp basic is easy and well documented.

I could be your first customer.

Say, I need an LCD display for my Basic Stamp. Any suggestions?

Karl

Right on. AND I'll know how to do it right after I've done it the other way. Plus, I've got a history of always looking down at the sparkies (EEs). Real engineers always ran the project and delegated this work. My main function was to ask, "why aren't you done yet?" and, "We need this additional function". I guess this little job is payback.

Karl

Pretty much C and C++.

Kevin Gallimore

Hoping I can come up with something in a reasonable amount of time, so far something has went wrong at work and I've had to stay over, takes away from hobby time but at least it's paid overtime.

I've seen a couple of serial LCD's at parallax.com for around $25-$30 but their may be less expensive ones available.

RogerN

Karl, if your sorting puts EE's and "real" engineers in disjoint sets I'm not sure that I like you any more.

What sort of engineer is "real" to you, and what traumatic experience did you have in your youth at the hands of an EE?

Try being a tech who has to take orders from both MEs and EEs.

Ooh, that sounds like fun.

You might want to do that if you'd like readers to discount your tongue-in-cheek posts as trivial.

Roger that!

Or a VIC-20 with the software in a game cartridge? :) Most of them only needed +5 VDC @ 1A and had a nice I/O port. As far as controlling four motors, that could be done sequentially, which would reduce the I/O requirements quite a bit.

I've been doing some work on using a PIC microcontroller to send and receive serial data to work with Opto22 boards. So far what I'm working on is compatible with the 50 pin header boards from 8 I/O to 24 I/O, the 32 I/O board has a different pinout on its header. I think I can read/write the 24 I/O points, plus communication, plus have an in circuit programming and debugging port, all with a 40 pin PIC microcontroller.

I plan to have the PIC preprogrammed as a serial I/O board to work with Basic Stamps, PC's or whatever else has a serial port. Most of what I've done so far has to do with the schematic and board layout, connector pinouts, and hardware for the project. I'm far enough along now with hardware design that I need to build a prototype on a breadboard and start developing and testing the software.

This board should be addressable either in hardware or software, meaning 2 pins from the Basic Stamp could be used for 24, 48, 72, 96,... I/O points, you could have 6,144 I/O points with an 8 bit address and 24 I/O per module, but the update wouldn't be very fast ;-)

And.. The PIC microcontroller on this I/O expander board would be programmable to turn the Opto22 board into a stand alone PLC type controller.

RogerN