On Thu, Jan 06, 2005 at 08:11:57PM +0000, Jason Holt wrote: > > Here's a project I've been working on recently: > > http://c3po.cs.byu.edu/~jason/wiki/index.php/UniversalIO > > This semester I'm going to design a board (which I can then get > produced in whatever quantity everyone wants) that should make it > easy for others, especially programmers, to build electronic gadgets > using a microcontroller or parpin interface from their Linux system.
I would like to take this opportunity to claim credit for inspiring Jason to embark on this project. :-) My SBC modem's been on the blink of late. I lose my connection a couple of times a day, on average (some days not at all; others, 5+ times). Whenever a script detects a down connection, it attempts to re-establish the PPPoE connection, and if that fails, it de-asserts a parallel port pin, waits a few seconds, and re-asserts that pin. I rigged up a circuit to throw a relay when that happens, power cycling the modem. Jason was kind enough to provide some advice in building the thing; it took me the better part of an afternoon, $15 worth of parts, and some nervousness as I wondered if I would fry my power supply and/or my mainboard's parallel port controller. And yes, I have a CE degree, so I did this sort of thing before in a lab, and I have seen students blow up transistors, capacitors, and (expensive) speakers with simple oversights. If I had a cheap device that could handle the 120VAC source, things would have been immensely simpler (I would not have had to splice the DC power supply to drive both the modem and the relay coil). Maybe I would do well to just bite the bullet and buy a new modem... Mike
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