Norcomp 999-H15-PS2L571 And The Propeller
idbruce
Posts: 6,197
As everyone most likely knows, I am deep into the 3D printer project and I have come to the conclusion that I will be using a two Propeller design. For the second Propeller, I will be using another Propeller Proto Board. Considering that I will now be using a second Proto Board, I will also now have a bunch of IO pins that will be unused. In an effort to put some of these left over pins to good use, I am thinking about adding the Norcomp 999-H15-PS2L571 connector and I am visualizing the potential for an optional keyboard, mouse, and VGA serial interface for 3D printing and CNC.
Basically I am just looking for input, links, and perhaps a worthy plan. If anyone has used this connector, please chime in, because I would like to hear about your experience with this connector.
Basically I am just looking for input, links, and perhaps a worthy plan. If anyone has used this connector, please chime in, because I would like to hear about your experience with this connector.
Comments
https://www.parallax.com/product/28075
https://www.parallax.com/product/130-32212
I knew that
Have you ever used it? And I am almost certain that you know where good documentation can be found
Using PS/2 connectors is a waste of time as all PS/2 compatible keyboards these days are primarily USB and a USB to PS/2 gender bender is a nuisance that can be avoided by mating directly to the USB connector using PS/2 protocol. As for VGA connectors themselves I try to avoid them altogether and let a simple 6-pin header be sufficient pcb-wise and make a cable that goes from this to the VGA monitor.
However I do have small Prop pcbs (Pixie) equipped with a male D-sub that plugs directly into the back of a monitor. This board fits into a nice little D-sub headshell and includes RS-485/422 plus optional Xbee, and a USB A connector for direct connection to a PS/2 compatible keyboard. This in my opinion is a better option if you want VGA as a bit-mapped display takes up most of the Prop's memory so there isn't much sense trying to make it do much else but make it a smart terminal.
Thank you for that Peter.... That completely slipped my mind and I definitely would have been wasting time.
Do you have any documentation pertaining to this?
I found a photo of one of the original Pixie units, normally these are equipped with a switching regulator module so that they can be multidropped over a 4-core phone cable which carries the RS-485 pair plus a 24V pair. The later versions also replaced the screw terminal with a right angle pluggable screw terminal. These monitors plus optional keypads would be scattered over a factory floor and the displays use bit-mapped tiled graphics with scalable fonts. There's also room for a USB serial module or Bluetooth serial module which plugs into my standard 8-pin header although this same header can be used to interface to expansion peripherals over I2C and serial lines.
I found an old post where I mentioning using these Pixies and also some shots of the VGA display in action.
Very cool and nice write up.
It looks as though there are actually two controllers in your example. If so, would they both be needed for the type of application that I am discussing?
What is the cost?
This display can be mated to anything that has RS-485 or even just plain serial, either logic level or RS232. The controller I used is just an older version of similar ones I use in various jobs and the main features of the controller is that it is a compact DIN rail mount, switching regulator (up to 50V supply), 12 bicolor LEDs, and room for two "Puppy" modules which includes a lot of compatible modules from drivers, H-bridges, microsteppers, datacomms (RS-485/232/CAN etc) to analog subsystems etc. Later versions of the controller also included microSD.
Price? Never bothered selling them as individual units but the Pixie I could probably sell over the forum for around $40 USD I guess.
I will keep that in mind.
Now let's say that tiling or bitmap display was not wanted, just a simple text terminal. How does that work out with the Propeller memory?
I was just thinking about something very simple, such as blue screen with white font, to run the full length of the screen, with nothing too lengthy across the width.
Display menu items at startup
Display typed in GCODE commands
Display read GCODE commands
Display error messages
However, the photos that Peter has shown look pretty enticing and that would be nice, for those folks that want colors, different fonts, etc...
Thanks for getting back to me.
Yea, I was nosing around the OBEX bright and early this morning. I ended up downloading the VGA_HiRes object. What kind of memory draw am I looking at with that?
What we really need is for a P2 to come along one day with easy USB interfaces...
I can still find PS/2 keyboards and mice at garage sales and swap meets, and they usually go for a dollar at two.
I was originally planning to use it on a Proto Board with my CNC project.
The screen in the above photo is a NTSC display. I had wondered about using both TV and VGA outputs. I asked about such a possibility in this thread.
If I use VGA or TV, I'll use a second Propeller. For now I'm just using one Propeller and trading out programs from a SD card.
I'm using a $5 OLED display from ITead Studio.
The SPI controller object (for the OLED) requires five control pins but I modified the object to use '595 shift registers on some of the pins and the other pins are shared with other SPI devices.
After adding '595 and '165 shift registers I've ended up with a dozen free I/O pins on the single Propeller.
Sharing SPI pins and using the '595 chips to control the chip select lines has really freed up a lot of I/O pins. Getting the CS lines to work through the shift register requires modifying any SPI object being used but I'm combining all the SPI object together anyway so it's not much additional work to add the '595 chip selects. (BTW, Don't try to share the SPI lines with the '595 when using the '595 to control CS pins.)
I thought it was pretty cool to add a MCP3208 chip without the need to use any additional I/O pins on the Prop.
I'm still very undecided about what to use as a display and what sort of input device(s) to use. The setup in this last picture is easier to work with at my PC (while writing the software) but it would be nice to have a larger display when the Propeller is controlling the CNC.
I have several of Rayman's 4.2" touchscreens. I've wondered about using one of these as a display and input device.