Re: control panel

[Ray Henry <rehenry-at-up.net>]

Erie

Thanks for bringing this issue up again.  The keyboard is handy and works 
great for testing, but the code and communication channel that it uses is 
IMO a mess to use to control the motion of a big machine.  Painting the 
<esc> key bright red and putting an estop label on it looks so cheap. <g> 

I soldered together a matrix of buttons with diodes a couple of years ago 
and fed them into a parport.  I picked up the byte using tkio and a big 
switch proc in tickle.  The problem was that iosh was not able to handle 
all of the NML stuff.  I've been talking with Paul about a better 
solution for NML connectors than the combined emcsh and iosh that I used 
back then.  Changes to the software aren't trivial but they can and will 
be done.

There are also better solutions for digital IO than a spare parport.  I 
just got a Measurement Computing (www.mccda1.com ) DIO-24 PCI card for 
some tests here.  I am able to get Linux's /proc/pci to locate it for me 
and can use iosh to read and write to it.  This means that PCI boards 
should be able to be used in these kinds of projects.

There are a number of ISA cards that will do similar tasks.  One 
interesting (inexpensive) set of boards can be had from 
http://www.winfordeng.com/products/crd155b.html for less than $75.00 but 
I haven't had a chance to try them yet.  This card uses a 25 pin parport 
connector and they have an inexpensive screw terminal interface card with 
some prototype area as well.  I don't know how much stuff you can get on 
that card but with the 25 pin connector you should be able to use a 
prototype breakout board like the little one from www.pmdx.com and it has 
quite a bit of area for your components.

The MAT (puffinplc) project on sourceforge has a set of open drawings for 
interface cards for a CIO/DIO-48 from Measurement Computing.  They say 
that a 48 IO isolated system can be set up for less than $3.33 per point. 
The printed circuit house that Curt used for the initial run had a 10 
board discount.  If there was enough interest, I'd order a set of boards 
and the components to assemble it and distribute them as a kit.

There's got to be a good "industrial" approach to IO that gets us beyond 
the extra parport.

Ray


On Wednesday 06 November 2002 11:10 am, you wrote:
> has anyone had any success modifying the io routines
> to enable a pushbutton start, abort, pause, resume, and
> perhaps feed+ and feed-, as well as jog buttons and
> manual/auto/mdi, home switches. My first thought
> was a programmable keyboard, or a hacked k/b
> controller, but it would be easier to add an additional
> parallel port and do it regardless of window focus.
>
> Erie Patsellis
> Shelbyville Design & Signworks
> 1309 W. S. 7th Street
> Shelbyville, IL 62565
> (217)774-4444
> visit our website at www.shelbyvilledesign.com