Digital I/O Board Kit

Gardue

I am interested in purchasing the Digital I/O Board Kit and had a few questions.

Does it support Dimming with Mechanical and or Solid State?

Can a generic serial driver such as the one that comes with Vixen work with it?

Do you plan to sell anything bigger than 8 channel, say 32/64?

Do I need a controller like an Arduino or can this board be controlled direct via serial or Parallel.

I am looking to drive some outside lights for my pool area, and maybe possible some xmas lights in the future. I need 12 channels, so I am I will be ordering 2 kits, and 16 solid state relays if my above questions work out like I need.

Thanks.

Mike Green

1) "Dimming" - No. Neither the mechanical relays nor most solid state relays support dimming. Theoretically a solid state relay might be able to do this, but practically it's not feasible.
2) "serial driver" - This board uses what's called "synchronous serial" or "clocked serial". This is not what is usually considered serial I/O. It requires a clock and data line for input and for output.
3) > 8 channels - For output, this board requires 3 I/O pins from a controller. If you want more boards, you can share one line, so 2 boards would need 5 I/O lines and 4 boards would need 9 I/O lines. I doubt Parallax would make bigger boards. It's too easy to use multiple boards for the same purpose.
4) "controller" - You could control the board directly via parallel I/O. Again, the board doesn't use what a PC would consider serial I/O. You probably would want to use a controller like a Stamp, either stand-alone or sitting between the Digital I/O Board and a PC.

Two of these boards together with a controller would be a good choice for your project. You could use an Arduino or a Stamp as a controller. A lot depends on how you would want to use this.

Gardue

So I would need to use Triac's instead of relays.

Does Parallax offer this board using either Triacs or MOSFETS?

Chris Savage

Gardue,

Welcome to the forums! The Digital I/O Board is available with either Mechanical Relays or SSRs (Solid-State Relays). A Triac would require additional circuitry and is a component in the SSR we carry.

TinkersALot

gardue, check this out:

http://www.efx-tek.com/topics/fc-4.html

and also this:

http://www.parallax.com/tabid/889/Default.aspx

this little widget was my poor-man's attempt at a light-o-rama -- but you may already know about them too.....