Basic Stamp 2 and Hard Drive

EMPTY_C

Hey all,

I was wondering if there was anyone who has used a hard drive as a data logger?· I remember a long time ago i asked about using a flash drive and now that is possible but now i wonder if a hard drive can be used.

MtC

Mike Green

Why would you want to do that? It would take a lot of I/O pins and a lot of the very limited variables in the Stamp to keep track of things. It's much much easier to use EEPROMs, particularly when you can get 128KByte EEPROMS and connect 4 of them to the same I2C bus to make 1/2MB. For larger logs, there are several dataloggers that can be bought for as little as $35 (Parallax's Memory Stick Datalogger) and handle GBs of information.

SRLM

Question about EEPROM: I've avoided the use of EEPROM for datalogging because of the need to have another program to retrieve the data. Is there a module that can allow the EEPROM to interface with a computer?

Mike Green

Use the same Stamp. Either download a retrieval program to the Stamp that communicates over the serial port used for programming or include both functions in the same program (datalogging and reporting) with the function selected with a switch connected to a spare I/O pin and checked during the program's initialization (after power on or a reset).

If you use a BS2pe instead of a BS2, you also have a total of 32K of EEPROM in the Stamp itself with half of it set aside for datalogging and the other half usable for either programming or data. If your datalogging needs are small, that would be the simplest solution.