USB thing for test automation

How about some sort of uC eval kit? Maybe even one for an FPGA.

Altera makes one that has a built in USB port, and/or runs on battery. Tons of digital interface, and ? four 16 bit ADC's

If you take their complementary course, they give you one.

How about Arduino Nano:

It's nice because USB port is really just an FTDI to serial converter, so both the PC side and the Atmel side are using TTL-level RS-232 serial.

--
/*  jhallen@world.std.com AB1GO */                        /* Joseph H. Allen */ 
int a[1817];main(z,p,q,r){for(p=80;q+p-80;p-=2*a[p])for(z=9;z--;)q=3&(r=time(0) 
+r*57)/7,q=q?q-1?q-2?1-p%79?-1:0:p%79-77?1:0:p158?-79:0,q?!a[p+q*2 
]?a[p+=a[p+=q]=q]=q:0:0;for(;q++-1817;)printf(q%79?"%c":"%c\n"," #"[!a[q-1]]);}

How much of a "may be"? Everything else is easy, DAC would need an external chip.

We use the (USB to) serial port to program, then the same port turn into debug port during run time. No need to mess with Jtag or Isp.

An Arduino with its USB-serial programming cable can do all of the above. There's a library function to write data from the chip to the serial port, library function to read the ADCs, toggle the pins, etc. I've used one with a MCP4725 I2C DAC with great success:

Try a Ruggeduino:

I really want to buy something all built and programmed, that I can just talk to serially without added engineering. A board or a box.

DLP Design makes some daq boards that use the FTDI chip, so look like serial ports. Most of the other stuff I can find has big DLL driver packages (one is a 38 mbyte download!)

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com 
http://www.highlandtechnology.com 

Precision electronic instrumentation 
Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators 
Custom laser drivers and controllers 
Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links 
VME thermocouple, LVDT, synchro   acquisition and simulation

It's true that you need to program the Arduino- but even if you know nothing about Arduino it will take you at most an hour of work.

I this one:

looks like the PIC version of the Arduino- Microchip should have it.

Anyway, their data acquisition boards do look pretty nice. Hopefully the protocol is simple.

--
/*  jhallen@world.std.com AB1GO */                        /* Joseph H. Allen */ 
int a[1817];main(z,p,q,r){for(p=80;q+p-80;p-=2*a[p])for(z=9;z--;)q=3&(r=time(0) 
+r*57)/7,q=q?q-1?q-2?1-p%79?-1:0:p%79-77?1:0:p158?-79:0,q?!a[p+q*2 
]?a[p+=a[p+=q]=q]=q:0:0;for(;q++-1817;)printf(q%79?"%c":"%c\n"," #"[!a[q-1]]);}

If you don't mind something the size of a half-brick, the LabJack U6 Pro is pretty swish. I bought one for a client on Joerg's recommendation, and liked it enough that I bought another one for myself.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs 
Principal Consultant 
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC 
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics 

160 North State Road #203 
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 USA 
+1 845 480 2058 

hobbs at electrooptical dot net 
http://electrooptical.net

What is the part number of the Altera device?

That's the one with the 38 mbyte driver download. I need to talk to it from a Windows app, probably in PowerBasic. A serial port presentation would be easiest; I don't need speed.

Do you talk to it from your own app?

--

John Larkin                  Highland Technology Inc 
www.highlandtechnology.com   jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com    

Precision electronic instrumentation 
Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators 
Custom timing and laser controllers 
Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links 
VME  analog, thermocouple, LVDT, synchro, tachometer 
Multichannel arbitrary waveform generators

Not in one can, but: USB soundcard (for ADC and DAC), and USB-to- parallel cable (for logic port)? It will be easy to tell the sound card to record to file; flipping individual bits on the parallel port is up to the Windows driver. I don't know if the drivers for these typically provide a "port 0x378" that you can fiddle with directly.

Matt Roberds

I have not done my own app but the libraries are there:

labjack.com/support/software/programming-resources

Lots of example code.

Get one and see - 114 bucks or 79 for the basic board without the connectors.

--
Chisolm 
Republic of Texas

How about something like the STM32F4Discovery evaluation kit?

If you are familiar with ARM Cortex CPUs it shouldn't be hard to get it to do what you want and ISTR it has 12bit ADC and DAC channels and way more IO than you could possibly need and all for about £10. There are cheaper ones but I can't recall offhand if they have enough DACs.

Its default firmware is a sort of wacky mouse using accelerometers and various other junk already on the evaluation board.

--
Regards, 
Martin Brown

How about

?

Website is a little whacky; I still find the bTop on a google search, but not from the home page - making me wonder if it's discontinued - so you'd probably want to call and verify availability, but:

--
Cats, coffee, chocolate...vices to live by 
Please don't feed the trolls. Killfile and ignore them so they will go away.

I've been using a PMD-1208LS (now branded as USB-1208LS) from Measurement Computing aka MCC for years and years. 8 single-ended or

4-differential ADC inputs, 16 logic-level I/O, and 2 DAC outputs. This model is okay for what I need it for (thermistor monitoring) but they do have others with more bits and faster acquisition. Works great, easy to program with function calls to the included "universal library" DLL and an ancient copy of Borland C++Builder 5. The old BCC apps still run fine on Win7-64.

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Arrow makes LPRP Starter kit containing the Cyclone III [I think I have v7.1.0] a little board with legs and battery that atttaches thru the USB port, has a myriad of external connectors.

Full documentation, parts list, schematics [both in pdf and OrCAD], and examples.

Altera Cyclone III CIII_Starter_QuickStart_Guide.pdf [4.8MB] may be my naming, but the kit, schematic, software are ALL available at Altera's website. probably avbailable for everyone of their kits

Yup. Visual C++, piece of cake.

#include labjackud.h link with labjackud.lib.

There's an example of how to do it in PowerBasic at

.

The code is for an older model, but it looks like it's easy to hack up for the newer library.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs 
Principal Consultant 
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC 
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics 

160 North State Road #203 
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 

hobbs at electrooptical dot net 
http://electrooptical.net

For John's case the cheaper U3 could suffice. One just has to put up with that ugly blood-red color of its enclosure.

--
Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/