Newbie Question

Dec 21, 2004 2 Replies

I'm a vb programmer. I need to read a basic on/off switch and wanted recomendations on the best way to do this. It sounds like the parallel port may be an easy/innexpensive way. I also want the ability to read many of these from one computer. For instance I might need to read up to 60 at a time. That tells me serial because it's expandable. I've also hear about digital input but it sounds like I don't need that. So my rec is:



Need ability to expand to read many switches Innexpensive Easy (since I'm an electronic newbie)



Any recomendations appreciated.


Since computers do only one thing at a time, you have to first decide how often you need to read the values of these switches, and how close to simultaneity "at a time" means.

John Popelish

formatting link

(Long URL -- if it's mangled, go to

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and search for part number USB-1096HFS.)

That's probably as easy a way as you'll find to read a bunch of discrete contacts (i.e., without multiplexing or a switch matrix of some kind). Includes a Visual Studio .NET component; the example shows a VB window.

There are other approaches but this is as close to plug'n'go as you're likely to find.

Rich Webb Norfolk, VA

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