How difficult is this and will this even extend the i/o's of the BS2

fredrox

I am putting together an led animation like neon on signs and I need to extend the io's of the BS2 I have for an ideal situation. I am new to programming and building circuits but this project is fairly simple. I also want to incorporate stereo sound but the voice module I found is currently unavailable any ideas?

Franklin

Give us more info and ask your original question.

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- Stephen

Mike Green

Look through the Nuts and Volts Columns that are downloadable from Parallax. Go to their main webpage and select the Resources tab and you'll see a link to them. Several are on various ways to expand the Stamp's I/O capability. They include discussion, schematics, and sample code.

Look at Vinculum's VMusic2. It's a USB memory stick drive with an MP3 player. It uses the same controller chip as Parallax's USB memory stick datalogger and the existing sample code also works with the VMusic2. The MP3 play commands are similar to the data commands.

fredrox

hello mike,
this is jeff I just received the vmusic2 and I am a little confused. The schematic on the viniculum website says to communicate with the micro controller I need another chip that I switch with the stamps outputs to play, skip, and stop the player. Can the vmusic2 be connected directlty to the BS2?

Mike Green

Yes, the VMusic2 can be connected directly to the BS2. Follow the directions for Parallax's USB memory stick datalogger, but use the cable that comes with the VMusic2 and start with the sample code for the datalogger. The easiest method is to use UART mode and the six connections (Vss, Vdd or 5VO, RTS#, RXD, TXD, and CTS#). Note that the memory stick datalogger has the same jumper to select UART mode vs. SPI mode. Follow the directions in the VMusic2 documentation for selecting UART mode.

You'll need to get the VMusic2 firmware documentation from FTDI's website to see how the MP3 commands look. As I said, they're the same general format as the other commands for reading and writing files and Parallax's sample code, while it doesn't use the MP3 commands, can be easily modified to play an MP3 file instead of reading a data file.

Post Edited (Mike Green) : 9/12/2008 4:44:03 AM GMT

T&E Engineer

There is an article in this months Nuts and Volts magazine where Jon Williams interfaces the VMusic2 to a Parallax·SX28.

Tim-M

Scary Terry has a good VMusic2 to Basic Stamp tutorial here as well:

http://www.scary-terry.com/vm2/vm2.htm

Tim

Edit: Be sure to take a look at the "Good info from the Garage of Evil" link at the bottom of the page, there is alot of detail and additional information there as well.

Post Edited (Tim-M) : 9/12/2008 2:54:03 PM GMT

fredrox

Thanks guys those were very good references for the vmusic2. I'll send pictures