Recommendations for I/O boards
varnon
Posts: 184
Hey guys, I would love to hear some recommendations for digital I/O boards for use with the Propeller. I've turned some colleagues onto this stuff. Some of them would like some general purpose boards like Parallax's I/O board or dual relay board but would rather not assemble a kit.
I've been looking at some options from arduino direct.
http://arduino-direct.com/sunshop/index.php?l=product_list&c=38
I've never used any of these devices, and the prices almost seem to good.
I've also been looking at some some Futurlec boards.
http://www.futurlec.com/InterfaceBoards.shtml
They seem pretty reasonable.
Of course these boards are going to send 5v signals to the microcontroller, but it doesn't seem too big of a deal to drop the signal to a propeller-safe level. It looks like I'll be adding or swapping a resistor, but not much else.
They are also intended to work with 5v signals from the microcontroller, but I can't image that 3.3v from the Propeller won't trigger the transistors.
I haven't seen any integrated I/O boards similar to Parallax's board yet.
Do you guys have any thoughts or suggestions?
My wants are: little to no assembly, opto-isolated inputs, transistor or relay outputs, easily made Propeller friendly.
Thanks for your thoughts.
I've been looking at some options from arduino direct.
http://arduino-direct.com/sunshop/index.php?l=product_list&c=38
I've never used any of these devices, and the prices almost seem to good.
I've also been looking at some some Futurlec boards.
http://www.futurlec.com/InterfaceBoards.shtml
They seem pretty reasonable.
Of course these boards are going to send 5v signals to the microcontroller, but it doesn't seem too big of a deal to drop the signal to a propeller-safe level. It looks like I'll be adding or swapping a resistor, but not much else.
They are also intended to work with 5v signals from the microcontroller, but I can't image that 3.3v from the Propeller won't trigger the transistors.
I haven't seen any integrated I/O boards similar to Parallax's board yet.
Do you guys have any thoughts or suggestions?
My wants are: little to no assembly, opto-isolated inputs, transistor or relay outputs, easily made Propeller friendly.
Thanks for your thoughts.
Comments
I often use the Futurlec website for shopping research as they are very good about providing PDFs for chips.
Regards,
Mickster
Sorry for the delay, I got a bit busy with the start of the semester. Given the comments and lack of "DON'T DO IT"s I think these will all work pretty well. I think I'll just recommend the Parallax and Futerlec products for now. I ordered from Futerlec before, and I had a very long delivery time. It wasn't unreasonable, just surprising. I contacted them and found out they were actually shipping from China even though they only charged US shipping. A little frustrating but it wasn't too big of a turn off.