{"id":287,"date":"2012-03-12T22:05:30","date_gmt":"2012-03-12T22:05:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/andyland.info\/wordpress\/?p=287"},"modified":"2012-03-12T22:06:58","modified_gmt":"2012-03-12T22:06:58","slug":"network-something","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/andyland.info\/wordpress\/network-something\/","title":{"rendered":"Network Something"},"content":{"rendered":"
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One day it hit\u00a0me. I\u00a0wanted to connect my coffee-machine to the internet. and my television…and my desk light… There are different approaches. One of the most stupid ones was to stuff a relais-board into my pc and….greeaaat idea..absolutely….”sorry, I cannot cook coffee because I first have to reboot my computer….” nope.<\/p>\n

One possible solution can be found at beyondlogic<\/a> but to me this approach is a little bit too professional. The most obvious solution\u00a0to me was taking a so called ‘printserver’. These thingies can\u00a0turn an ordinary printer (with a parallel port only) into a\u00a0printer\u00a0with a network connector. The good thing is they are\u00a0approximately as big as a pack of cigarettes. Do we need more?<\/p>\n

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\nThe only thing missing is the circuit that will act as a printer towards the printserver. With a little research (and lots of trial-and-error) this circuit evolved. It mainly consists of a 74ls373 (shift register, parallel i\/o) and a 74ls00 (nand-gate). The circuit, the software, the description and a few pictures can be downloaded\u00a0here (zip, 4,8 MB)<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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The power supply comes directly from the printserver. Hotglue doesn’t come with style but who cares – it works. The software is rather simple visual basic stuff. Basically the value for the output byte of the lpt port is sent to the network address of the printserver. Nice to see when things come up that easy.<\/p>\n

B.t.w: cost of material is at about 2,50 \u20acuros. The printserver was sold very cheaply by a friend\u00a0of\u00a0mine.\u00a0Someone has to undercut that!<\/p>\n

Update (6.6.2006):<\/p>\n

Meanwhile some people\u00a0became attentive to this project. One of them\u00a0is matthias dierolf<\/a> who\u00a0found\u00a0this\u00a0project\u00a0via the microcontroller-forum<\/a>. After some basic questions he not only was able to rebuild a working interface\u00a0himself\u00a0but also rewrote the software and the circiut diagram completely. Now it’s\u00a0way\u00a0better to read and understand. The fact that he uses a printserver from a completely different vendor shows that this should hack work with every device capable of communicating via the so called RAW-format<\/p>\n

Thanks, mate!
\nAll the project-files\u00a0(from Matthias\u00a0and me) including photos\u00a0can be found here (zip, 4,8 MB)<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Important note: should\u00a0you ever get the idea\u00a0of switching 110\/220 V (or more)\u00a0with this thing\u00a0think about what you will be doing\u00a0BEFORE. Pay attention to galvanic separation, safety regulations, etc. Due to the fact that there are no security mechanisms implemented it’s basically possible for everyone on the internet to switch your TV, coffee-machine, toaster,…..<\/p>\n

I won’t take any responsibility for what you will be doing. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[February, 2nd, 2007]<\/p>\n

Finally, the little thingy made it into youtube:<\/p>\n

You can see the circuit with the printserver on the one side. they are connected to a latop via an ordinary switch. the laptop runs a ‘ping’ to verify the existing connection. the software on the left side to the screen is set to light the first for digits \/ pins.<\/p>\n

[tube]http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=YytqCtpx1Z8&feature=player_embedded[\/tube]<\/p>\n

[27.2.2007]<\/p>\n

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I already said it\u00a0before: a few days ago this thing has been featured at\u00a0Hack-A-Day<\/a>. This did not only cause a gigantic increase in my hitcount but it also gave me the possibility to get into contact with people being interested into this. Boyan Biandov<\/a> was one of those who had the idea to drive an LCD\u00a0with the circuit.<\/p>\n

He\u00a0already had\u00a0a display lying arround from earlier experiments and just tried to attach it to\u00a0the lpt-port of his\u00a0Jet Direct ex3 Box. The result is that he is now able to connect to the box via netcat and port 9100 and…see for yourself:<\/p>\n

\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Yes, it is a network-operated display. Great. The display he uses is a\u00a0IEE 03601-96 2×40 VFD. Datasheet and connection diagrams will be added to the archive soon. Boyan told me he plans to use this thing to control his camera rack<\/a>.<\/p>\n

After seeing his success I wanted to try this myself but\u00a0due to\u00a0availability and price I preferred to try it with an HD44780\u00a0compatible\u00a0lcd.<\/p>\n

It took me one night of work but then….<\/p>\n

\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Right: What you are seeing jere is an HD44780\u00a0compatible lcd\u00a0that can directly be connected to a network.<\/p>\n

The trick (which truely isn’t one) is to operate the display in 4bit-mode. This means\u00a0it only takes 6 lines\u00a0for operation (4 data lines, control and enable). All in all you only have to sacrifice 5 data-lines because the ENABLE signal is dirived from the inverted STROBE signal which is created by the printserver when data are being sent to its lpt-port.<\/p>\n

This is nearly too easy =-))<\/p>\n

Caused by my lack of knowledge concerning the operation if these displays (last night was the first time\u00a0I ever dealt with this topic)\u00a0the operation is still a\u00a0a little scetchy. Means: The 4bit nibbles are created by clicking them together with the tool that’s\u00a0normally taken to control the leds and then sent to the device- nibble by nibble.<\/p>\n

Takes some time but at least it works.<\/p>\n

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Despite\u00a0running various test I\u00a0culdn’t manage\u00a0to operate\u00a0an HD44780 compatible display without the shift-register and the nand-gate. I think\u00a0this is related to timing problems. If an lcd is directly connected to the lpt port (of cause with some pull-down resistors, etc) nothing will happen even though a clean initalization squence is run. debugging without an oscilloscope looks a little difficult to me so I am taking into account that I have to solder two more parts.<\/p>\n

As soon as the Content is uploaded and I get to recoordinate my private life I will create a program for controlling the lcd. circuit diagrams, archive etc will also be updated as soon as possible.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[9.8.2007]<\/p>\n

Unfortunately\u00a0I don’t have too much time at the moment to work\u00a0on this project.\u00a0At least I was able to restructure\u00a0(and translate) the documentation, circuits, etc\u00a0and pack them into a neat archive. The scripts which were send to me during the last weeks are also included. As soon as I have a little more time to spend I will pick up the work on this. righ now\u00a0I have to say at least one big ‘Thank You’ to all the people who participated in this project up to now.<\/p>\n

Download (6,3 MB)<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[12.7.2010]<\/p>\n

It’s kind of unbelievable but there are still people contacting me with questions about this device. This surely IS cool and you can all feel free to ask me as much as you want – I’ll give my best to help you all. But meanwhile new possibilities to realize such a device have been developed. My favourite solution to control basically anythting via network is the Arduino platform. If you didn’t hear about it yet: It’s an open source microcontroller platform. The Controller is programmed in a C-like language which is easy to learn. The IDE is based on JAVA and is available for all major operating systems. There is already a huge amount of extensions available. They are called ‘Shields’. The Ethernet Shield has become one of the most important ones for me. Arduino plus Ethernet Shield are roughly about 60\u20ac here in Germany. For that price you get a fully customizable ethernet platform. It is, for example, easy to implement inputs from the network. Something that I never managed to realize with printservers. Do yourself a favour: Try it. Arduino website<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One day it hit\u00a0me. I\u00a0wanted to connect my coffee-machine to the internet. and my television…and my desk light… There are different approaches. One of the most stupid ones was to stuff a relais-board into my pc and….greeaaat idea..absolutely….”sorry, I cannot cook coffee because I first have to reboot my computer….” \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-projekte","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/andyland.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/andyland.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/andyland.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andyland.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andyland.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=287"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/andyland.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/andyland.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andyland.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andyland.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}