Of course! IT BLINKS! Now all you got to do is add an IR sensor and a audio module that cry's DANGER! DANGER! when someone gets to close.

Why all the components on the bottom...smoke and mirrors?

$160,000 in total damage isn't quite your $300,000 threshold, but it was real damage to production environment equipment and actual repair dollars that had to be paid.

I think I need to step aside for Oracle. Replacing the board on the machine I fried wouldn't even come close to $160,000.

I wonder if he knew that he invented the chip that gave the most fun to the most people ever. Is there any old timer out there that has not tried some form of the 555 atari-punk?

I made two portable units for my kids and they drove my wife nuts ]

Just got to thinking. There were a number of new post form people who zapped their motor shields. I thought it might make them feel better to know that they are not alone.

While working as test manager for a company that manufactured mass spec units, I managed to short the internal high voltage source to main PC board with spectacular results. The machine itself retailed for $300,000. The PC board, of course, could be replaced so the whole unit was not destroyed, but can you imagine how you would feel if you were a lab tech doing chemical analysis and you zapped it?

The up side is that we corrected the problem, and since it was my job to try and break these guys... well I did my job even though I didn't know I was doing it at the time.

So since I really don't know what the repair would have cost outside the "test" situation, lets just say I zapped a $300,000 piece of equipment.

We have $300,000... do I hear anything higher?

    I am assuming pressing the foot switch just connects pin 1 to pin 2 temporarily.  

No, it should connect the pin1 the logic pin to pin 3 the ground pin. The 24 volts should just power whatever it is that drives the mechanism.

If it just requires a 5 volt signal to toggle the mechanism, then you should be able to connect the Arduino directly to the logic pin 1 with a common ground on pin 3.  Might be wise to see how much current the input pulls when the logic goes high. If it is less than about 30 mv then you can connect directly. it should be way less than that for most solid state things. If it isn't then you need to use a transistor or some other device between the Arduino output and pin 1. The Arduino would be connected to the base of the transistor through a 1 k ohm resistor. If there is a inductive kick ( some sort of relay) down the line from the Arduino, you should also put in a bypass capacitor.

there was a bad smell and I shut it down pretty quickly

By the time you smell it, it is too late. Yeah you smoked something. probably the board. You might check it out with a multimeter, sounds like there is some functionality. See if it draws a lot of current when nothing is happening. That would mean you burned a new current path some where. The driver working a low amps and not at higher amps may mean you partially fried something and now you have a high resistance path to output that limits the current and unbalances the steps after a certain load. Either way, the easiest thing is to just get a new board unless you are into removing board components. 

Is the total dark reading > 35? with this low reading the delta between the pulse high and low may be below the threshold of detection.

The only mnemonic I ever learned is unpublishable... anyone have a better one? 

The pump relay that Jeffmans speced out looks like a solid state. I have had no trouble with high current solid states, but then I run only resistive loads that don't kick back. The trick I use to avoid lots of heat is to use a relay rated at twice the amps. That way I only need a good heat sink and a little ventilation. The cost isn't that much more. The old kiln relays were all duty cycle contacts and they were always needing replacement... but they were switching probably a lot more than most applications.

if the second sensor shows a value less then 10 or more than 100 the strings get confused.

on which end the VB or Arduino?  

i beleive it is the threshold for mscomm1

The com port only sees characters coming through.You need to use the string functions to find the start and end of the value you are looking for. Then if it is a 10 or a 1000 will make no difference.

so if your input string is a10b or a1000b it makes no difference to the code below

Code:

strt = InStr(str, "a") +1  ' one char past the a
  fin = InStr(str, "b")
  If (fin - strt) <= 0 Then
   Exit Function
  Else
   SensorVal =  Mid(str, strt, (fin - strt))

I've used a simple contact micro switch. with the pin as input, make sure you add a 10K pull down to ground and make the logic to trigger on the switch going HIGH. That means having a switch that you can wire as normally open. works fine and uses a little  less current.

Yes you can send a long string over from the Arduino like  @a13.98b200c0.079d346e122.7 and use the VB string functions to select out each sensor value. You might write a function to simplify this

function GetSensorVal(BeginingLetTer,EndingLetter)  returns float or whatever

then to get the first value you could just call Val1 = GetSensorVal("c","d") and it would give you 0.079

You really don't need the @. I just used it as the start of the string since I am looking at only one temperature value and it made a good character to use when I was trying to identify the correct com port.

you are pretty much there fenderrobban as far as I/O from the Arduino to the VB app.  You need to learn to use some of the string functions in VB. Look at my previous post with instr and mid and figure out what I am doing to pull the info out of the total string coming over from the Arduino.

The last Arduino code you sent had pretty much all commented out. you need a Serial.println() to terminate the string. look at what is coming out the Arduino side and compare it with what you have coded it to expect on the VB side

You can use VB to display the results in the form as a text box or label, or even drop them into a list box. You just need to take one step at a time and build your code on that.

I used the debug.print just because it was the easiest way to see if you were getting anything over the line.  Now you can use any of the widgets or functions in VB to manipulate it and get the output you want

Charting the output will require you to really know what you are doing in VB. Don't even think of it till you have a much better understanding of how to manipulate string and numeric values in VB. The chart widgets included in VB are not that good, and they are kind of hard to learn, unless you have a pretty good feel for what you are coding.

Try this... start a new project in the VB IDE. Create a form and put a VB com control component on it. open the code window and paste the following code into it. be sure and change the com port to the one the Arduino is using. Make sure you have the Arduino IDE closed or the VB app will not connect.

open the immediate window in the VB IDE

This is the simplest possible case. If should work if you are sending a string with a @ in it .

Code:

Private Sub Form_Load()
With MSComm1
        If .PortOpen Then .PortOpen = False
        ' change this to the com port shown by the arduino
        .CommPort = 3
        .Settings = "9600,N,8,1"
        .DTREnable = True
        .RTSEnable = True
        .RThreshold = 4
        .SThreshold = 3
        .PortOpen = True
  End With

End Sub

Private Sub MSComm1_OnComm()
Dim strData As String
Static strBuffer As String
Dim strWords() As String
Dim intPos As Integer
Dim boComplete As Boolean
Dim mystr As String


 

        mystr = "" ' set the string to nothing
        mystr = MSComm1.Input
     
 
            intPos = InStr(mystr, "@")
            If intPos > 0 Then
            Debug.Print mystr
           End If
             
End Sub