Thanks Geek and wildbill i will look at your ideas and try to come up with something... I know this shows my age but it was so simple back in the day of Commodore 64... (pls don't say never heard of that one) but you could simply place a 1 or 0 on a special pin then look into memory at that address and read the value to the computer screen... nowadays the serial ports are so dang complex.. its not easy anymore.. but hopefully i will get something working... so if anyone else has other ideas I am all ears... the two of you have given me food for thought but i have a lot of experimenting to do unless I find a datalogger that show the step by step to set if up... and i really don't mind spending a few bucks on a commercial one on the market if its simple and not too expensive... Thanks again for your inputs.. I appreciate it..
Earlier i had been looking at the adafruit version 13.95.. looks pretty complicated but I can read well and even though it has huge capability it can probably do simple stuff too like I am doing.. plus there will probably be a fourm for help and since commercial maybe even be able to ask for help if needed...