Cute little Gizmo's

Noiseless Time Switch

Automatic time switch. No problems programming it, just plug in a serial cable to your PC or laptop and off you go. See the DB9 connector at the bottom. And....., it is absolutely noiseless, only if it switches it will give an elegant 'click' :-).

Serial Weather station

Smurfins favorite: Weather station. Remote display. Datatransfer is serial and wired to a Pentium 75 upstairs.

A piece of good old WIN SDK programming

All set up to make a serial connection between the PC-based weather station and a satellite display in the living room. See picture above.

The wire from upstairs delivers both the signal and the power. So, it is a 1 wire device. If we had put the signal wirelessly to the satellite display we would have needed 1 wire for the power supply. So we still would have had a 1 wire device :-))).

This code is used for serial transmission at the PC-side

DCB dcb ;
HANDLE COMDEV;

COMDEV = CreateFile( "COM1", GENERIC_READ | GENERIC_WRITE,
0, // exclusive access
NULL, // no security attrs
OPEN_EXISTING,
FILE_ATTRIBUTE_NORMAL,// | FILE_FLAG_OVERLAPPED, // overlapped I/O
NULL );

GetCommState( COMDEV, &dcb ) ;
SetCommState( COMDEV, &dcb ) ;

dcb.BaudRate = CBR_9600;
dcb.ByteSize = 8;
dcb.Parity = NOPARITY;
dcb.StopBits = ONESTOPBIT;
dcb.fDtrControl=DTR_CONTROL_DISABLE;//:2;

dcb.DCBlength = sizeof( DCB ) ;

BYTE Wind= (BYTE)WindBf;
BYTE Baro= (BYTE)(Barometer-900);
BYTE Regen= (BYTE)(Regenmeter);
BYTE Zon= (BYTE)(Zonnepaneel);
BYTE Display=( uren>=8 && uren<23);

Datalogger with USB to PC

The first real datalogger, "mother of invention". Basic Stamp BS2pe with 12 bit ADC, Real Time Clock and 4x20 display. For communication to the PC there is a serial (TTL level) to USB converter based on an FTDI-chip.

Tiny motherboard during testing

Basic Stamp2p24 and peripherals: EEPROM memory 2x64kByte, 11 channel 12 bit ADC, 2 channel 12 bit DAC, math-coprocessor and IO-extender (PIC16F628) + PCF8583 Real Time Clock. Sadly- sadly, these extensions where much too heavy for the Basic Stamp PBasic language. This is the point where Bromsmurf decided to make a definite move to the C language. And he did not regret this move for a second !!!

Controlling Krokus and the rest

Recent developments: The Krokus instruments can be controlled from an infrared (TV) remote control and the instrument can control various pieces of equipment using RF signals.This is the start of an integration between Krokus instruments and ordinary Domotics products.

Bromsmurfsite