CONTROL YOUR HOME MADE APPLINCE
At work, we thought it would be cool if we could turn on some siren lights when a server goes down.
Step #1 to make this happen was to be able to control simple electronics from custom code. I love C# and the USB port is what is common now so I researched and found the FT245RL “USB to FIFO” chip. This chip made it really easy for me. It plays well with drivers known by Windows.
When I plugged in the chip to the USB port, Windows 7 immediately recognized it and installed the drivers for it. You can use a couple of drivers the default is the simpler one to use where it turns the USB port into a virtual serial (COM) port.
Writing to serial ports is really standard so this is the code that outputs a byte through the chip:
BUY Breakout Board for FT245RL USB to FIFO
Features:
- Implements full v2.0 USB protocol
- Needs no external crystal
- Internal EEPROM for device ID and Product Description strings
- Royalty-Free Driver support for Windows, Linux, and Mac OSX
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