Re: [Debconf-video] Goals, wishes and suggestions for Debconf8.
On Tue, Jun 26, 2007 at 02:18:38AM +0100, Ben Hutchings wrote:
> On Sun, 2007-06-24 at 07:15 +0100, Tore Sinding Bekkedal wrote:
> > > > " a lamp on the camera which says whether or not the cam's on "
> > > I have a pic programmed to do this, when faced with different characters
> > > at a serial port.
> >
> > As we've discussed on IRC, I myself don't see this as the right
> > solution. The use of a PIC is needlessly complicated, it introduces
> > cabling requirements (although the cabling requirements to make RS-232
> > frames transmit correctly admittedly aren't stringent), there could be
> > serial port problems, you can only run one camera per serial port,
> > many machines nowadays dont even have serial ports..
>
> > I suggest using a single I/O line off the parallel port, as it can be
> > programmed to act as an 8-bit general-purpose TTL-level output.
>
> Many machines don't have parallel ports either.
>
> I made a half-serious suggestion to Dave that the simplest way to attach
> a tally light would be to cannibalise a USB keyboard. (I believe all
> the lock lights are programmable.) But that is sick.
>
> As I said on IRC, Cypress has cheap microcontrollers[1],[2] with
> hardware USB and flash, but programming them may be difficult without a
> fairly expensive development kit[3]. However there is a fair amount of
> documentation on their web site and the only critical thing missing is
> the low-level flash programming protocol needed initially.
> (Reprogramming can be done under firmware control[4].) It might be
> worth asking for documentation of that.
>
Alternatively you could look into http://atmel.com/dyn/products/product_card.asp?part_id=4096.
AVR8 microcontroller with USB which comes with a simple loader which
allows flashing the controller over USB. The AVR8 architecture is
supported by gcc-avr. The controller can also be programmed using avrprog.
Cheers,
Peter (p2).
--
Goa is a state of mind
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