New Guy

[realolman]

I am new to this forum. I got here by wanting to check what the smallest change would be for 10 bit A/D of 5 v. Looks like my kind of stuff. ( Is that good or bad ? )

I have been messing w computers and the BASIC language since early eighties. Made some boards and had some small successes with real world I/O. My wife says I'm nuts... could be.

I am not satisfied though, and it seems like it keeps getting harder. I searched this site and only came up w only one hit on Visual Basic... an article about monitoring the position of your garage door. ( because you can... Like I said... I think I'm in the right place, but don't know if that's good or bad )

It seems to be getting harder to use BASIC with every version, when it should be getting easier. They keep hiding the computer from you more and more. I have VB 6 and I am just about to give up on .NET. VB6 does at least have serial port capabilities.

What good kinds of I/O are available for the home user ( Temperature, analog, Digital I/O)?

What do you use to write programs?

I don't want to buy some canned thing that will only do what they want you to do ... I want to do what I want to do. I recently bought a LabJack U 12. Not sure if I like it or not... might send it back. Anyone have any experience or thoughts on that?

Thanks

 

[jwilson56]

Well I program with Labview at work but decided to go with Homeseer for my Homeautomation. It can be tweaked anyway you want through scripts or plugins you can write yourself. So its kind of the best of both worlds. I myself got into the whole house audio setup pretty deep and it seems like it became the center piece for my homeautomation with the light control, ect a distant second. I still like to tinker and see what I can monitor to make our home nicer to live in.

For some the Elk system has been a good investment as its very reliable.

The one thing I have learned over the years (I started with an OSI system back in the late 70's) is that for home automation you need something that is dependable. Nothing gets the wife upset faster with this hobby than to have it go nuts in the middle of the night.

I have seen the Labjack. It seems to be popular and looks fine. I use data acquisition that costs thousands of dollars at work where I design and build test stands for a automobile testing lab. Lots of load cells, string pots, servo-hydraulic controllers and digital I/O.

Well you have come to the right place. You will find a diversity of people and solutions here.

Check out my project....

http://www.cocoontech.com/index.php?showto...&hl=now+playing

John

 

[brothers]

.NET 2.0 has a serial port class. You can download Visual Basic.NET 2005 Express Edition for free from the Microsoft site.

- Dennis Brothers

 

[BraveSirRobbin]

Hi realolman and welcome to CocoonTech.com.

Curious, was that Guide on Analog to Digital Converters any help to you (you are probably the first to really use it)??

FYI, not sure if this help you but at one time HomeSeer technologies provided an active-X component for the CM11a which would give you easy VB6 capabilities to the powerline interface.