Motor Mount & Wheel Kit with Position Controller w/ PC serial port impossible?

Otter

Hey Crew,

Did I just see in a posting here in this forum that it was impossible to connect the Motor Mount & Wheel Kit with Position Controller to a normal PC serial port?· I figured a single serial line from the port could be used but apparently one line can't be used for transmit and receive simultaneously.

I was just assuming there would be a way to do this.· After all a heck of a lot of devices use this single line serial I/O scheme.

Any ideas?

Sincerely,

-todd

Mike Green

You need some kind of external logic to translate the voltage levels (from RS232 to TTL) and to manage the half-duplex connection with signals going in either direction. It's possible to do this with a couple of ICs, but it's not trivial and you have to manage the direction using the handshake lines (RTS). It would be much more useful and simpler to just use a Stamp and let it handle the translation back and forth.

Otter

Mike,

Ah... I was afraid of that. Still, it opens up some new options and some new flexibility.

I know this is the wrong thread in which to mention this, but since you cared enough to respond, I have a question about the Stamps. I see all of these devices hooked up to them, with three different ways of using these I/O pins. Sometimes pins are used like single line serial I/O, sometimes they're used with an analog input, with the data showing up magically converted to numbers in the programs, and sometimes, like with the Ping))), they can measure the length of a pulse.

I mean, I'm not an engineer, but that seems like a lot of roles for one little pin to have.

Am I correct being a little suspicious of that? Am I missing something?

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