Tethered Arduino UNO - Digital I/O automation

Projects General Guidance
1

Hi Everyone,
I am new to the Arduino world.

I am a hardware QA by trade and I have been given the task of automating some Digital I/O tests on a product we have.
I am looking to use Arduino to do this.

What I want to be able to do is have the Arduino plugged into a PC and have the PC periodically fire down a message that will configure and set I/O to be an input or output and then drive it high or low.

Since I am quite new to the world of Arduino and programming I am in a bit over my head and would like some help.

2

The Arduino part is very easy. The PC part that is sending commands to the Arduino is the part you need to nail down, because there are loads and loads of different ways to implement it. Ultimately, where do these commands originate?

3

what sort of tests are these ?
if they are switching on/off at certain time intervals, i think the Arduino can do that without needing the PC

4

Its not as simple as having it timed.

There will be some other stuff happening on the PC. This is a run down of what im going to be doing

  1. Send a command to a device1 to set it Digital input to sense VCC with a bunch of other settings in place around that
  2. tell the arduino to set it output to high
  3. detect VCC on device input
  4. wait ** time
  5. tell the arduino to set output low

I cant go into too much detail about what device1 is doing as I have company IP to protect.
What i need is the software we are building to be able to push a config out to the Arduino to configure an I/O as Input or Output and set it high or low

5

i'm just a newbie really, so i have no idea how sophisticated the PC controlling procedures can be - but;

have the PC periodically fire down a message that will configure and set I/O to be an input or output and then drive it high or low

sounds like Serial communication would be possible, depending on what character/setting gets sent to the Arduino, it would process a particular sequence.
if you're sensing voltages, i'm guessing using the Analog pins - although i don't know what sort of levels of accuracy you'd need.

6

Our device can detect anything from 0.3v to 32v we dont care what the voltage or current is. It just triggers an event when the circuit is complete.

essentially we can set out device to scene a ground or sense a voltage depending on its configuration.
I need the arduino to create what our device is looking for but one when we tell it to.