On Tue, 11 Dec 2012, Smohn Jith wrote:
It's the age of "do things without effort". By trading money for something already built, the masses get to "make" things without having to know much.On 12/11/2012 12:13 AM, Kevin wrote:the simplest way would be to get a microcontroller (like an arduino, or something else cheap and easy to program) to listen to the serial port of the GS and solid state relays appropriate for the input voltage, and switching voltage current. Just like using any other computer, you make a program, have it send out commands, which the micro reads and acts upon.you could get a bit more fancy and find some outputs on the computer itself and bit bang those (like a card slot) but you still have to have some way to isolate the fragile brains from the brute force of mains, SSR's are usually the easiest way ... though if you dont shop around they can bite you in terms of cost.I'm not sure why you would want to bother with the Arduino. Just go right from the gameport, and access it through basic. I have been tempted to replicate most Arduino projects with an Apple IIe just out of spite.
I think I'd go for a parallel port, more output lines, but then as someone points out, to control lights, you'd need some sort of isolation so you don't end up damaging the I/O or the computer. The original poster isn't talking about controlling LEDs that run at 5v.
But now people buy off the shelf solutions, able to get end results and believe they are taking initiative. There's the Raspberry Pi, a tiny computer that runs Linux, sells for about forty dollars, and I'm not sure in itself is dangerous. But I saw it promoted the other day in a kit that cost over a hundred dollars, a book to tell you how to do things, some accessories that in the past people would scrounge up (resistors and other tiny parts, a case for the board) and so on. So instead of helping people to enter by making a cheap board, the stake gets raised because people are being told they can't do something at the low end. So those Arduino boards are sold as solutions, and they are cheaper than many microcontroller boards of the past, but they are still way too expensive for a lot of the things some people seem to use them for. So I imagine they are being bought by a lot of people so they can program it rather than solder a few parts together, and then because of the expense, the whole thing is then taken apart so they can reuse the board for something else.
Michael