Alright here's the scoop. I've built a bunch of stuff (lights, power supplies, etc) around my office/lab/whatever that is all controlled by my arduino. The arduino is in turn controlled by my pc, where my programs reside. The programs allow keystroke as well as voice command operation of all the various relays the arduino runs. Here's the problem, I want to play with my arduino and I can't do that while all my gear is dependent on it. So, I just got 15 attiny45's and 5 attiny85's (thanks amtel) and want to switch over to those running everything, but I can't chat with them via serial as far as I know. So I'm looking for some ideas to interface my pc with these new chips. Any help would be awesome, thanks!
Here's a picture of some cranberries.
Some options that may work...
• V-USB
• FTDI adapter and SoftwareSerial
• "Host" board (like an Arduino Uno) that relays using I2C
• IR transmitter on the PC; IR receivers on the ATtiny processors
What I'm really looking for is just a simple way to send some sort of electrical pulse that attiny can register, I really don't need any proper communication, unfortunately my understanding of serial communication isn't precisely robust, but if I can just send a series of pulses from any i/o port on the computer and then get the attiny to count the pulses and act accordingly that would be perfectly sufficient. I would prefer to use only "stock" pc devices. Not sure how to do this, I use a java based program w/ sphinx4 for the voice recognition and all it does is send out a single character(more specifically the appropriate bytes) which my atmega644p interprets. Sometimes I just use a terminal program as well and just type 1 or whatever and send it, which is the same thing the java program kicks out. I dunno, maybe I should just throw my scope on the the data lines in my com port. Ideas?
Thanks
Haha funny story, no not really. Its was the first main controller for my reprap which is based on the sanguino. Later it turned out there was nothing wrong with it at all and I pretty much just wasted my money buying a replacement, there I go assume the piece I made by hand was at fault again, anyway it did afford me a very awesome chip to play with so oh well. Speaking of which, want to buy a reprap?
So there's a USB-to-TTL-serial converter between the computer and the ATmega644P processor. Is the converter part of the board or separate?
Then the second option should work well. Run transmit from the converter (and ground) to a chain of ATtiny processors, include an "address" with the command, add SoftwareSerial to the sketch, and voilà a mini X10 network.
To be frank, a fair portion of that is a bit over my head, or at least my current level of study, but I will certainly look into. Sadly I'd like to free up my ttl so I can play with my 644 (the original purpose) but I did go out of my way to get mobo that has a com port. That should work right?
I'd like to free up my ttl
I believe a replacement can be had for $2 (EBay).
I did go out of my way to get mobo that has a com port. That should work right?
Only with additional hardware#. RS-232 is +12 volts to -12 volts. An Arduino is +5 volts to 0 volts. One can damage to the other.
# I vaguely recall that a diode and resistor are needed for the receiver. Various early Arduino boards have a circuit that will work.
