[time-nuts] Re: timing lab, remote control

[Hal Murray]

Tom Van Baak said:
> So the question is, does anyone make a black box that acts as a transparent
> latch or GPIO? I'd like 8 or 16 bits at my bench that when changed turn into
> bits in the remote lab. Ideally no setup, no protocol, no commands, no
> software, no operating system, no bugs; just two boxes with N pins on each
> end and changes are reflected from one to the other over LAN. TTL/CMOS level
> is fine. Some latency is ok.

> I'm not looking for yet another WiFi, Arduino/LAN, or R-Pi project, but
> rather a turn-key solution that just works. I spent a significant amount  of
> time on the web, thinking this would be a trivial search, but I came  up
> empty. 

Please let is know if/what you end up with.

Don't overlook the approach of just running real wires.

I think your "no setup, no protocol, no commands, no software, no operating 
system" is going to be hard to find.  If nothing else, you will have to run 
wires to/from the devices you want to control and/or monitor.

The other interesting part of setup is assigning IP Addresses or discovering 
what the box gets get via DHCP.

If you put a device on the net, somebody is responsible for making sure that 
it doesn't generate abusive traffic.  That's probably not a problem if your 
device is behind a NAT box and doesn't talk to the outside world.  But the 
world is full of devices with buggy software that get borrowed by bad guys to 
send spam or DDoS traffic or steal your passwords or ...

If I was doing something like this, I would start with a pair of Raspberry 
Pi-s.  That's because I'm familiar with them and know how to keep the OS up to 
date and enjoy writing software like this.  I can often find something else 
for the Pi to do and/or already have a Pi where I could add something like 
this.

A Pi has lots of GPIO pins that come out on a 40 pin connector.  Most cases 
have a slot for the cable.  A quick tour on eBay shows various setups for 
connecting up to GPIO pins on a Pi.  If you find something that looks 
wonderful, I'll be glad to write the software for you.

There are also USB to GPIO gizmos.  I only glanced at those.




-- 
These are my opinions.  I hate spam.