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You are here: Home / Mail Archive / How to make your electronics talk to your computer

How to make your electronics talk to your computer

January 27, 2015 By Øyvind Nydal Dahl Leave a Comment

Microcontroller Board ATmega32u4 from SparkfunIn the beginning there were pins that went high and low.

Super easy to work with and understand.

I am talking about the good old parallel and serial ports on a computer.

You might remember them.

You might not.

But I remember that I was super excited when I learned about them. Because it meant I could connect my electronics in the real world, to the virtual world of the computer. And discovering things like that has always made me happy.

My first project was a simple box with buttons that I connected to the serial port. And I programmed a simple program on my computer that could control a music player called Winamp.

These days, we usually connect things through USB. But you can get USB-to-parallel port or USB-to-Serial converters, if you miss them.

With USB, things get a bit more complicated.

At least to do simple things.

But it makes it simpler to do advanced things. That’s the advantage.

To make a USB gadget, you need a microcontroller with a USB device interface. You need to program it with code that follows the USB protocol. And the machine that you connect your device to, must have a driver that supports your device. But there are a lot of standard drivers you can use.

If you’re interested in this, it’s possible to make a USB gadget by expanding on the microcontroller circuit I built back in January:
https://www.build-electronic-circuits.com/microcontroller-tutorial-part5/

I went through this process myself, when making the multi-touch interface for the Mangascreen: http://goo.gl/mDjhRw

Learning about the USB protocol was one of those topics that when I started, I thought “Oh man, I will never be able to learn this stuff”.

But I didn’t allow myself to quit. And after a few days, the USB protocol started to make sense.

And when I got the circuit working – wooooow that was fun!

I am upgrading my video course at the moment, and I am thinking a lot about how I can transfer these learning processes to you.

If what I am writing about feels too complex for you, don’t worry. You’ll get there. Here you can start from scratch:

https://www.build-electronic-circuits.com/products/ebook-2nd-edition/

Keep on Soldering!
Oyvind

PS! The Mangascreen project has been almost 200% funded already. So it will happen. The tiny little HDMI screen is a really cool addon to your projects. It’s mostly my friend Elias’ project, but I help out. See more info here:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1924187374/manga-screen-multi-touch-43-lcd

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