Analog voltage measurement via USB

If you INSIST on building your own, why not just voltage to ADC to some simple USB chip? What the heck is the VCO for? Is there not a simple ucontroller that has both USB and ADC functions?

Cheers, Tom

Hi Tom, thanks for the reply.

The VCOs, believe it or not, are to inject some personality. It's an experimental musical instrument that a friend has been talking about and we're not sure where to start. Thing is we'll need to have API-level access to the USB data since it'll be used to drive a software synth or something along those lines. The DI-158 could be a good starting point - thanks for the pointer. In fact now I think about it, soft wynth writers have already gone to a lot of effort to put "character" in their synths, so it's a bit of a waste of time and parts go down that route...

Regards, Mike

Hello Mike,

Take a look at these:

Hi Mike,

take a microcontroller of your biggest knowledge having a UART and AD. Use a cellphone-USB-cable (Samsung E700 f.e. only a few $ via ebay) to connect the microcontroller to PC via virtual COMx.

Marte

Forgive me for being wrong but doesn't using that stuff tie you into using National Instruments LabShit software which is really expensive and S*IT.

DNA

Hello DNA,

AFAIK you can hook them up to NI software and there is a matching LabView driver but you don't have to. They also come with their own SW. One edition is for simple stuff like when you want to monitor some slow process in the lab while going to the pub for a while. This page lists all the stuff:

There are also deluxe packages that allow a lot more features, sending alerts to your mobile phone and so on. That is done with this type of software:

EMANT300, 22 bits, multichannel adc, dac, digital IO, etc $100

Thanks to all for the replies. I'll have another look around, but it's going to be a very basic 2-channel ADC so I think I've got enough to go on. Cheers!

Regards, Mike