win 98 SE as a device controller ? ?

Hi Folks

I'm sitting here with 4 win 98SE machines, and 2 XP's, and a Ubuntu,
and am DOS compatible. I would like to be able to control certain
aspects of my greenhouse, chicken coop and garden activities; several
lights, heaters, and water valves are what come to mind immediatly.

Dynamic response to remote sensors would be icing on the cake
eventually, but a simple digital multi-output timeclock thingymajigy
to start with would tickle me no end.

Do any of the group know how I might get started on this quest? I
have googled around a lot on this but can't find the meaty how to
source that I need to get me going.

yours

douglas

I am Stumped. = Canadian aphorism for having been chased up a tree by
a moose, with no further options. Not to be confused with UP a stump.

On Tue, 6 Jul 2010 18:04:40 -0700 (PDT), koonaone
wrote:

Hi Folks

I'm sitting here with 4 win 98SE machines, and 2 XP's, and a Ubuntu,
and am DOS compatible. I would like to be able to control certain
aspects of my greenhouse, chicken coop and garden activities; several
lights, heaters, and water valves are what come to mind immediatly.

Dynamic response to remote sensors would be icing on the cake
eventually, but a simple digital multi-output timeclock thingymajigy
to start with would tickle me no end.

Do any of the group know how I might get started on this quest? I
have googled around a lot on this but can't find the meaty how to
source that I need to get me going.

A few observations. flame suit on
Win9X/ME are all DOS-based, and user programs are able to directly
access machine ports. Later MS O/S are NT-based and interpose their
own layers, requiring third party tools to obtain this low-level
access (*). 9X machines are probably close to optimal for your task.

In languages such as QBasic (supplied with Win9X/ME) it is
straightforward to write simple programs to control I/O via the serial
and/or parallel port. Ebay often shows cheap external boards which
interface to these ports and provide input isolation (usually opto)
and output via relays, which give isolation as well as increased load
handling.

If you want to go down this route, I can dig up many links to websites
which provide much more detail especially re using the parallel port
for this type of work.

(*) or other workarounds.

fly on the wall wrote:

A few observations. flame suit on
Win9X/ME are all DOS-based, and user programs are able to directly
access machine ports.

You have several misconceptions there.

It's true that NT-based OS's are normally able to prevent application
programs from having direct access to I/O ports, but there are several
ways to get around that. For example, I have a 16-bit application
program (written in power basic 3.5 for DOS) that performs direct I/O to
about 16 ports in the 500h - 5b0h range. The application is "packaged"
inside a 32-bit shell that uses "port talker" to give the app the access
it needs when it's running on an XP machine:

http://www.beyondlogic.org/porttalk/porttalk.htm

The misconceptions you have is that Windows 9x/me are "DOS-based". They
are not. They are far more similar to 32-bit NT-based OS's then they
are to DOS.

For example, Win-9x/me puts the CPU into protected mode upon bootup,
whereas DOS only operates in real mode.

You might also be confused by the fact that both Win-9x/me and DOS share
the same file system (FAT/FAT32, not NTFS) so you might think that they
might have more in common because of that.

koonaone wrote:

I would like to be able to control certain aspects of my greenhouse,
chicken coop and garden activities; several lights, heaters, and
water valves are what come to mind immediatly.

Dynamic response to remote sensors would be icing on the cake
eventually, but a simple digital multi-output timeclock thingymajigy
to start with would tickle me no end.

Do any of the group know how I might get started on this quest? I
have googled around a lot on this but can't find the meaty how to
source that I need to get me going.

Depending on the your knowledge and familiarity with windows-based
programming, if you are more familar with DOS programming tools (various
versions of basic) then yes, it can be much faster to code up a control
app in basic vs using visual studio, visual C, C++, or hardware specific
solutions (National Instruments - Labview, etc).

In the past, I've built my own ISA interface cards to perform signal
acquisition and external device control (relay's, A/D, speech
synthesizers, etc) and I've also used ISA protyping cards. It can be
very quick and easy to build an ISA interface card to do digital I/O.

PCI cards can also be accessed by DOS/Basic programs without necessarily
needing a DOS driver. As long as you know the I/O addresses being used
by the card, you can simply read and write to them directly.

Here's an example:

http://www.mccdaq.com/isa-data-acqui...-DAS08-JR.aspx

That board has 8 analog inputs, 8 digital inputs and 8 digital outputs.
Cost is $269.

Or look at this one:

http://www.omega.com/ppt/pptsc.asp?r...Y16&Nav=dasd03

This has 16 relays built onto the board, which allows you to control
devices requiring 120 VAC or 28 VDC. It's an ISA board, and it costs
$369.

The closest thing I've built along the lines of what your looking at was
to control 3 phone lines using relays. The relays (each double-pole /
double-throw) allowed a phone line to be connected either to a digital
PBX phone system or to a computer modem in a PC depending on a time
schedule.

Given an office with 5 roll-over phone lines, it was required that some
of them were used as dial-in lines after hours and on weekends. So at 5
pm, line 5 was switched from being connected to the phone system to
being connected to modem #1. At 6 pm, line 4 was switched to modem 2,
and at 7 pm line 3 was switched to modem 3. In the morning, the
reversed was done so that by 9 am, all 3 lines were reconnected back to
the phone system. Weekends and holidays had their own schedule. The
control program was written in either quick basic or power basic, and
had an interface that allowed the user to force any line to immediately
be connected to either the phone system or a modem for manual control.

The hardware interface itself was done through the parallel port (ie -
printer port). The printer port on most motherboards is a latch that
can store an 8-bit value. I used a Vmos transistor to take the digital
signal lines from the printer port and drive a low power relay, and
connected an LED for a visual indication of which relay was on. I used
5 volts that the computer already had to power the relays. Real easy
stuff.

Here's something I found just now:

http://www.epanorama.net/circuits/parallel_output.html

http://www.electronickits.com/kit/co...lec/ck1601.htm

http://www.circuitdb.com/circuits/id/85

Aha! this looks heartening, thanks guys.

In antiquity Basic and batch files were very useful to me, I'm sure
with a little brushup they could be again,

fly otw wrote Jul 6, 7:42 pm
If you want to go down this route, I can dig up many links to websites
which provide much more detail

Yes fly otw send those links, and thanks 98 Guy for those you
posted. (Jul 6, 8:59 pm}

I'm a computer user and not much of an electrician, so this aspect
looks like a good project for me to get my teeth in to next winter,
I'll have much more shop and desk time available.

Right now my valves are independant battery clock operated, lights and
the heater are mechanicaly clock operated or manual. I can visualise a
louvered window into my house from the greenhouse to capture episodic
spring and fall solar heat. And so on.

These things I can cogitate and plan for right now.

Thanks again

douglas


On Tue, 6 Jul 2010 18:04:40 -0700 (PDT), koonaone
wrote:

Hi Folks

I'm sitting here with 4 win 98SE machines, and 2 XP's, and a Ubuntu,
and am DOS compatible. I would like to be able to control certain
aspects of my greenhouse, ...........................

On Tue, 06 Jul 2010 23:59:53 -0400, 98 Guy wrote:

fly on the wall wrote:

A few observations. flame suit on
Win9X/ME are all DOS-based, and user programs are able to directly
access machine ports.

You have several misconceptions there.

It's true that NT-based OS's are normally able to prevent application
programs from having direct access to I/O ports, but there are several
ways to get around that. For example, I have a 16-bit application
program (written in power basic 3.5 for DOS) that performs direct I/O to
about 16 ports in the 500h - 5b0h range. The application is "packaged"
inside a 32-bit shell that uses "port talker" to give the app the access
it needs when it's running on an XP machine:

http://www.beyondlogic.org/porttalk/porttalk.htm

Did you deliberately omit the following line:

Later MS O/S are NT-based and interpose their
own layers, requiring third party tools to obtain this low-level
access (*).

and the asterisked footnote:

(*) or other workarounds.

The misconceptions you have is that Windows 9x/me are "DOS-based". They
are not.

They are. They are GUI shells atop DOS 7..... They have a LOT in
common with DOS.

But I have no interest in getting into an endless war of semantics
with you or anyone else on the matter.

They are far more similar to 32-bit NT-based OS's then they
are to DOS.

For example, Win-9x/me puts the CPU into protected mode upon bootup,
whereas DOS only operates in real mode.

You might also be confused by the fact that both Win-9x/me and DOS share
the same file system (FAT/FAT32, not NTFS) so you might think that they
might have more in common because of that.

On Wed, 7 Jul 2010 08:31:10 -0700 (PDT), koonaone
wrote:

Aha! this looks heartening, thanks guys.

In antiquity Basic and batch files were very useful to me, I'm sure
with a little brushup they could be again,

fly otw wrote Jul 6, 7:42 pm
If you want to go down this route, I can dig up many links to websites
which provide much more detail

Yes fly otw send those links, and thanks 98 Guy for those you
posted. (Jul 6, 8:59 pm}

Apart from the Tomi Engdahl link posted by 98Guy (third from last),
have a look at:

http://www.beyondlogic.org/ (about half-way down, right column, there
are a number of useful docs)

Jan Axelson's page at http://www.lvr.com/ - parallel port link near
the top

Also http://www.beyondlogic.org/spp/parallel.htm

There's a few to get you started.

QBasic - for the reasons I mentioned - is a good tool for this stuff.
(I still write compiled apps in VB-DOS for use on 9X systems where
parallel port I/O - and particularly input - is required.)

fly on the wall wrote:

The misconceptions you have is that Windows 9x/me are "DOS-based".
They are not.

They are. They are GUI shells atop DOS 7.

You are completely wrong about that. You are thinking of Windows 3.

The transistion from Win16 to Win32 happened with Windows NT and Windows
95. There can be no DOS support layers involved in anything that's
running Win32 code.

You are confused with the fact that the Win32 API in Windows 95 allowed
flat thunks for 32-bit code to call into 16-bit code for compatibility
with older DOS applications, while NT allowed only generic thunking.
Both NT and 9x allowed only generic thunking from Win16 to Win32.

To say that DOS acts like or exists as an underlying support layer from
which Windows 95/98 are run on top of is completely absurd. It is a
complete impossibility for many reasons (memory management, CPU
operating mode, multitasking, etc).

You might also be confused because win-9x/me are booted or launched
while the computer is transiently running DOS. This is necessary in
order to load Win.com. Win.com loads and hands control off to
Vmm32.vxd, which will switch the CPU from real to protected mode,
effectively removing all traces of "DOS" from the machine's operating
state.

On Tue, 6 Jul 2010 18:04:40 -0700 (PDT), koonaone
put finger to keyboard and composed:

I'm sitting here with 4 win 98SE machines, and 2 XP's, and a Ubuntu,
and am DOS compatible. I would like to be able to control certain
aspects of my greenhouse, chicken coop and garden activities; several
lights, heaters, and water valves are what come to mind immediatly.

Dynamic response to remote sensors would be icing on the cake
eventually, but a simple digital multi-output timeclock thingymajigy
to start with would tickle me no end.

Do any of the group know how I might get started on this quest? I
have googled around a lot on this but can't find the meaty how to
source that I need to get me going.

I would use the Win98SE boxes as data loggers rather than controllers.
Instead I would leave the control up to dedicated PICAXEs. These are
PIC microcontrollers that run a version of BASIC. You can program them
from the serial port of your PC. An 8-pin PICAXE costs about $3, and a
larger version with more I/O pins costs about $10. You can interface
the PICAXEs wirelessly with your Win98SE boxes via cheap AM Tx/Rx
modules that accept RS232C serial data streams.

See page 42 of the following PDF:
http://www.t4.ie/LC%20Technology/day...its%20Book.pdf

Here is a greenhouse monitor with AM Tx/Rx modules:
http://www.rev-ed.co.uk/docs/project...%20Monitor.pdf

PICAXE home page:
http://www.picaxe.co.uk/

- Franc Zabkar
--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.