Software sucks. The Lua scripting is *not* like C. It is *not* like VB. In fact, I can't decide *what* it's like. I can read it, but all the rules are strange to me. I bought the three recommended books and some info is applicable and some is not. No help.
I occasionally design test sets, and I've been using an ARM processor to talk USB and manage things inside the test set. Of course, the ARM has to be programmed. I used one LPC3250 recently and am currently designing a test set with an LPC1768 as the manager. We talk to them serial, using an FTDI usb-serial chip, and the 3250 thing talked Ethernet too.
The test programs run on PCs, mostly Linux, in Python.
It's been suggested that we use a LabJack instead of an ARM cpu to manage the test boards, but they are mechanically klunky and don't have many i/o bits. What you say about the software is interesting. Addressing a test set as a COM port is easy. COM ports are about the only non-weird easily accessed i/o mechanism left on PCs these days.
I thought about selling the LPC1768 chip, programmed to do nice general test set i/o stuff, or maybe giving away the program.
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John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
lunatic fringe electronics
I ran a labjack with python... I don't really know python very well, so it was a learning experience both ways. Labjack has libraries (or whatever they are called.) that you install and it just worked. If you know C there are C "libraries" too.
I don't think Labjacks would be good for anything fast - USB is not really suitable for real-time. We also use them (with Python) for monitoring temperatures and currents, and a bit of control - but nothing with timings faster than about 0.1 seconds.
That is nice to know. I have a software tool I have been advancing as new hardware that can talk comes to me..
Currently I use it for connecting to ethernet and Serial com lines to link various protocols, one very popular one like ModBus.
I have set up a drag and drop template to create projects where a given project can look like the equipment on the screen that the PC is currently connected to. This is more for an easy test and calibration tool but it can also act as a HMI interface to operate such devices at the same time.. I do have a scripting system and maybe the Labjack would be a nice adding hardware interface I could include and thus allow scripts to interact with forms on the screen and API calls to the LabJact drivers.
Looking at the price it looks like a cheap enough product..
All I would need to do is create a proxy lib so that it'll look and act natural to my tool set..
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