jolouis
Registered: June 24, 2009
Posts: 7
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| June 24, 2009 at 02:46 AM |
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Reply with quote | #1 |
Hi All,
I've been using the K108's in combination with some embedded devices for a project that we developed to fit a customer's requirements about a year ago, and just wanted to say first off thanks, this kit is awesome! I've made some minor modifications to it already to suit my needs, including:
- Pull out the opto-iso's and jumpering their pins so that the inputs are now switch-driven (don't require external voltage to trigger).
- Installed an external Altronix 6030 timer board that is connected to the data LED through one of the opto-iso's.
The first one's pretty straight forward, as I've written my own C software that polls the inputs to determine which "unit number" the kit is so that multiple kits can be connected to my embedded device without having to worry about which serial port they're connected to/etc.
The second is there because in my particular application the state of the relays is absolutely critical; that is, if for some reason the software locks up, or the embedded device fails/whatever, I need to make sure the relays all reset. The trick was to take the small signal level voltage that runs through the Data LED, and tie it as the input for one of the opto-iso's; then use the switching side of that opto-iso to forward 12V current to the trigger port of the Altronix timer. The timer is rigged up to control the reset switch on the kit... so the way it works is, if no data is received by the kit after 30 seconds, the timer triggers the reset switch and drops the relays out; as long as data is received once every 30 seconds, the timer will never expire, so reset will never happen and relays work normally.
It's a bit complicated, but works very well. All I was wondering was if anyone could think of a better way to approach this... i.e. does the Amtel chip have any kind of internal clock or timer that I could use to acheive the same sort of functionality without all the extra components, or? I don't know anything about PIC programming, but since I'm at least dealing with relative volumes of these units (200 so far, and at least that number again in the future) I could probably justify an investment of some time and effort if it made sense...
Thanks!
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Frank
Moderator
Registered: July 31, 2005
Posts: 1,347
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| June 24, 2009 at 11:09 AM |
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Reply with quote | #2 |
I have in fact got a version of the firmware that will automatically reset (release) all the realys after 'x' seconds of inactivity on the serial port.
Currently it only uses the 'I' and 'S' commands to restart the inactivity timer but I can update to include other commands as well.
This firmware is only available through me (kit developer).
Please email me directly for further details.
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