Pen Truth

Mike Trethowan


 
 
 
 
Building on the previous post VB.NET Quick Tip – Reading A USB GPS, I will show how to use a USB to Serial cable manufactured by FTDI.  In my projects, prototyping and final products I use the FTDI TTL-232R extensively.  The cable is reasonably priced and comes in two varieties, a 5 volt and 3.3 volt model.

Pen Truth

Mike Trethowan

 
 
 

Several years ago, 2000ish I developed a Tower Clock Controller that captured the WWVB signal from Fort Collins, Colorado and converted it to the format used by the Tower Clock Drive Boards manufactured by the company that I work for.  For that project I used a device that was available for Basic Stamp projects.  Later on when those devices became unavailable I redesigned the project for a GPS module.

Pen Truth

Mike Trethowan

One of the products that I occasionally work with is the Xport Direct from Lantronix.  One of the shortcomings is that the DNS server on LAN routers will not return the DHCP Device Name when a DNS request is made.  This is not very convenient when you require your customer to set aside an IP before the installation.  This means that you can’t simply create a Client Socket and connect using only the Host Name and Port Number.  This also means that for one to write software to communicate with the device you have to give the Xport Direct a fixed IP address and connect using the IP and Port Number.

 

Pen Truth

Christopher Saikes

I have had a fellow Democrat comment on one of my social media page posts that he would not vote for Bernie Sanders because Sanders is not a Democrat.