Back in the day, standard serial and printer ports could be used as GPIO. That was the first time I was controlling electrical devices using a computer.
@@ahmad-murery Those were the days my friend, we thought they'd never end. But they did. Personally I think a picoW or ESP32 has so much more to offer, so why did they bother with this ?
@@hilldweller2 So true my friend👍, anyway, I think having a direct access to GPIO will open the doors again for some applications (windows apps for example) to easily read/control external machines at a low cost.
Actually, you could probably do something almost identical today. You can set up serial connections to MCUs, although they will admittedly actually be routed via USB. Send bits over the computer's pseudo serial port to indicate whether pins should be high or low.
I worked for an industrial controls company back in the early to mid-1990s. All that equipment used to cost tens of thousands of dollars. Now you're showing us the current state of the art. My 1990s self is marveling at what has become of that industry.
This is not the state of the art. This is a very very basic version the state of the distilled tens of thousands because it is highly accurate and certified for a lot more uses.
@UKsystems - You're talking to a guy who used to program Allen-Bradley PLCs using ladder logic. You could buy a BASIC module for it but it would cost a fortune. I was around long enough to see Allen-Bradley lose a lot of market share to smaller (much smaller), faster PLCs from Japan as well as domestic competitors. Just seeing that functionality on a single board computer 30+ years later is jaw dropping.
@ you said current state of fear and this isn’t so you were trying to argue the fact that 30 years ago this was very advanced but you mentioned current things in your comment please decide
My dad worked in industrial refrigeration and designed control systems for them in the 90s. I am marveling at these current cheap technologies for similar reasons.
GPIO is such a nice thing to have. I always enjoyed having GPIO available on my Commodore 64 for projects. When everything went to "standard PC" I had to do go through all sorts of nonsense hacking the parallel port into a GPIO-like interface. Now we finally have good options again.
@@adilsongoliveira I was going to write an integrator program for windows for a RF spectrometer and this is exactly what I was looking for ( both reading and turning on/off small valves), though, I'm going to attempt this in C++ instead of python.
This is a really important video, as this is the sort of thing that could be used for school science. Get a cheap old PC, get one of these boards, and start to create your own monitoring system built. Lots of potential with it, thanks for making this video.
@ExplainingComputers Is it possible to do same with old smartphone an it would give it a new life?? If yes then I have a request to make a detailed video on setting this up on some good python ide on smartphone. Thank you❤ and I like your explanation old school and easy to understand.
Wonderful!!!!! I have a bmax B2-S arriving today (caught a great sale/discount, $104 versus usual $130-$160). Needed it since I threw away several old very slow laptops.. I've been looking for details on how to handle sensors, I2C and DIO natively using python from a "PC" and it sure looks like this is the definitive guide. Like others I had missed several steps when looking on my own. I have a ton of ESP32s that work great but I also wanted to be able to log, graph and view the data easily under linux or Windows without needing a separate device to handle the data acquisition.. this seems to fit the bill. I've always loved this channel!! Been working professionally with electronics and computers since 1973
Finally! After a 40 year wait there is now an affordable way to give a PC as much functionality as the BBC Micro's user port. Another great video, the code is a bit more complex than poking to the User 6522.
Absolutely fantastic content ... as Brian said (paraphrase here) you make it look easy! In reality it is, but it seems easier when I watch you do it. Thanks for sharing and the work you do making anything seem possible.
Thanks for all your videos, Chris. This video (GPIO for any PC or Laptop: Adafruit FT232H) is something I never knew was possible with MacOS. Too cool!
I am very grateful to you for the new video! Now there is a chance to expand the functionality of a retro laptop, before that I theoretically represented communication via LPT and a CNC machine 🎉
My first job out of high school was working at a radio shop where I learned to tune radios (before PLL frequency synthesis), install and service "car phones" and most interestingly build police squad cars by installing radios and light bars. I have several colorful stories from those days, like the time I repeatedly pressed a "man down" button on a portable police radio before I knew what it was, or the one where I did a "test drive" of a newly built squad car like the Dukes of Hazard. But this story comes to mind because of something in this video. One aspect of the construction of a squad car was to add circuitry for something called "wig-wag" lights. That is the connection of relays to flash the headlights alternately left and right about once per second. The LED's in this video are alternating at about that rate and reminded me of this time I left work exactly on time, and I was in a hurry to get home. I was speeding like usual and behind me I saw the dreadful wig-wags and really thought me house was cooked. I dug out my license, registration and proof of insurance. Well, I was surprised when the officer didn't ask for them but addressed me by name. It was Sargeant Deeghan who came to visit me at work but I wasn't there. So he chased me down on the highway! He wanted to ask about the function of one of the radios and didn't want to wait until tomorrow, ha ha. Well I laughed all the way home after he also gave me a verbal warning about my speed. That day was a good day to have the police Sargeant as my friend. 13:15 So then, I hope you will remember that an alternating pair of lights is called "wig-wag" lights. 😀
I've never seen this channel before but as a 45 year old I have to commend the style of video and how reminiscent it is of quality BBC science programmes from the 80s!
I wish stuff like this existed 30 years ago.. The first Computer I used to control external devices was a Commodore 64 (Expansion Port) to control an Amateur Radio Repeater on the Two Meter Band... Using opto-isolators to provide the isolation between 5 and 12 volt Supplies.. It was fun, and very rewarding to make it work.. (Especially) incorporating a phone patch (all before) Cellular Phones.
First time I "talked" to anything through an UART-like connect was to clear SMART registers on a bricked Seagate drive (the ones that once in a few hundred cycles froze on start-up). Felt so haxxory!
I'm sorry, but it's just NOT a proper Sunday without a very informative & delightful visit with our true gentleman of a friend Christopher & Explaining Computers! 😇
I feel inordinately pleased to have reproduced your flashing LEDs using the MCP2221A breakout board. Thanks for this video - it opens a world of possibilities!
Very nice way to use the pc and IO thanks for the instructions I have just moved to Linux Mint Deb so will have a go as soon as I purchase the FT232H board.
Great video. If you have a BME280 with a different address, like in this case, you can simply specify it when you initialize the library instead of editing the value in the library. This also makes installing updates much easier.
This is an interesting video, I knew some were saying that Mini PCs were the way to go as a Pi alternative, but never understood how you could use it like a Pi until this video. I still would like to get a Pi and play around with it as I am surrounded by PCs. I wouldn't be playing around with it in the development sense at the start, just playing around with it like any other PC to see what it's like and doing PC style things with it.
Great tutorial! I like how these breakout boards are dirt cheap and you can just use a computer you already have. Unlike the RBP, cheap x86 computers to run linux and python are everywhere.
Direct and indirect IO is a matter of interpretation. Fundamentally both the FTDI and Pico approaches use USB to communicate IO reads and writes. It is 100% possible to load a Pico with firmware such that it emulates exactly the FTDI part.
Another good day's work, Chris. I always saw the Raspberry Pi's main use not being for teaching juniors coding but in the lab recording data reliably. Your video has me thinking of using it with a breakout board for ventilation control system in a busy bar/restaurant. Cheers.
While a green led when plugging something in is very exciting indeed, it's even more exciting to see a 'breadcrumb' on a breadboard (at 12:29 near the ft232ic). 😆 I guess next would be a Blender video about creating and then printing a new case for the B-Max B1 Plus with integrated, easily accessible FT232H pin header. Thanks for a very nice video and Happy Easter! 🐇🐰🥚
I thought about doing some logging, but rather than connecting sensors to a PC USB port I'd use an esp32 or pico w, setup a simple web page and retrieve the values using a cron job (wget) and storing in a csv. I could do logging this way on many sensors in different locations with less software libraries. Also an esp32 is cheaper than a ft232h.
This is excellent and very timely! I have just ordered some sensors and knew I would have to get down to using Micropython, GPIO etc. This video has given some ideas about helping my daughter to use sensors on a PC, despite having no Raspberry experience. I find you have already issued videos which will be really useful such as your RPi Weather Station. Thanks!
@@ExplainingComputers AND the RPi Plant Watering and Time Lapse Photography videos! I've only been thinking recently that I ought to get down to time lapse with a Camera Module 3. Thanks again
Thanks Chris, I'll keep that in mind. It's definitely an eye-opening idea with great potential for good things. Checked price - in my regular shop it's 20 GBP.
This is so very exciting. Chris you just made my day. I have a couple old low power Thin Clients that I installed Linux Mint on that only draw about 6 watts when running. So with the Adafruit interface It could easily be used for temperature and presents detection as well as the most important "Flashing LEDs" Yes!!. Haven't really played with Python much, so this is great motivation to do so. Thank you again Chris for an excellent tutorial. 👍😎
You packed a lot in this one. It's like you've done it before. I'm not sure if I could do all that in a week. I usually have several missed steps and mistakes. I screw up so much, that I account for it when I plan any project.
BTW, your Bmax mini PC presentation was so compelling that I ordered a Bmax from China. They were fresh out of stock locally which was probably your fault. :)
always such interesting videos with my muffin and hot tea. 🥳 Back in the DOS-PC days people came up with clever printer port projects. Now with these sweet little add-on boards the creative ideas are fantastic even 16 bit+ ADC/DAC channels. 😎 Thanks a lot.
@@timnixon2889 There was a board that B G micro used to sell way back then that had a Couple of TI speech synth chips on it. You could connect it to a serial port them just send text to it.
" Back in the DOS-PC days" Dos was the key! Because Dos ran in real mode you could do anything. You could read and write directly to any IO port or memory address. Obviously modern operating systems don't allow that. With modern operating systems applications run at PL3 and the kernel and maybe some low level device drivers run at PL0. That means that normal software cannot access IO ports directly. That means to do this under modern operating systems you must write a device driver and create somekind of API that will be used by your applications to make calls to that driver. That complicates things quite a bit. Also some modern operating systems, like the newer versions of windows even require drivers to be approved and signed by microsoft. That usually puts it out of reach by the average hobbyist. Interestingly enough, one exception to this is RS-232 com ports. These can still work because there are drivers and API calls already built into windows that allow you to open, close, read, and write to those ports. Thanks to backward compatibility with old school terminal applications this still exists. Unfortunately RS-232 ports are getting harder and harder to find on modern PCs.
There are many ways to give a PC gpio capability. As noted in other comments, a PI or Arduino can be used by running a protocol over the serial link. The protocol used by the FT232H could be supported on other platforms. In the past I have used Web Midi in chrome browser to do gpio over a Midi interface to an Arduino. ( Optical isolation both ways with 5 pin Din Midi ) depending on latency etc, you may want to run some parts on the PI/Arduino and others on the PC.
Awesome stuff. such a wide range of qwicc and other boards waiting to talk to a general purpose PC, the possibilities are endless. Thanks for the introduction to electronics for PCs.
Thank you for this. I have no idea why this should be usefull instead of just using a RPI or a Pico - but that's exactly, why I'm intrigued to try it. :) From the comment i see, that other people like me, feel it's a time travel back to the days where computers were more electronic than they are today. We used serial and parallel ports if we had to control some self invented hardware. :) I'm trying to find some information about a Danish guy, who in approx 1995-2000 created a smart home, with a Commodore 64 and a huge amount of cables going to coffee maker, windows locks, door locks, and thermostats. He could even call his home with a telephone, and control some of the devices pressing different keys. :) They made a small news clip on TV about it back then, and i wish i could see that again
Whilst I don't own anything that uses the FT232H, the MCP2221A is a really great chip to work with, and plus, it is available in 14-pin DIP form factor, making one's own PCBs for it practical. I have one of these MCP chips mounted in my PC tower, controlling a third LED on the front bezel. I wrote a Win32 C++ app that makes it turn this LED on or off, depending on whether my NVIDIA graphics is "hard at work" or not ("throttle reason is not code-16/idle") by ways of the NVML API.
@@petermuller608I don't understand how this target audience is different. Someone could easy take an ESP32, make it spit out all its GPIO outputs to the serial com, and (maybe) also take inputs as applicable, and someone could easily write a python script to parse that on the general PC side.
What an interesting video I never cease to be amazed by Chris's content. I didn't know about Samantha, she does make very neat soldered connections!! It's got me thinking of other applications it could be applied to, like a model railway (railroad) layout, signalling, block control & setting points etc, the code would be quite interesting to write but what an experience :)
This is fantastic! I’m just getting started with electronics and the Pi’s GPIO, and just assumed I’d have to dive into the SBC ecosystem. It’s just awesome I can use my x86 and x64 relics to explore GPIO, although with a little research I guess I could have accomplished this w the Pico and sub variants. Thanks!
I'd say that the way Chris has shown it here on the PC is no different to using an SBC, it's the same compiler and IDE! What would make this more PC compatible would be some API calls you can make from say Visual Basic or MS Excel or even batch files or scripts.
My main projects that I will be working on is a weather station that has wind speed and direction and a plant irrigation system (house plant watering - because I am away a lot).
Waited since forever for something like this, though there are probably dozens of ways to do it. +10 years ago Arduino, etc came at the right time for stand alone projects. It got in the way of development for direct USB GPIO to/from the computer.
This reminds me about my first FTDI project. FT245R, AT90S8515, and 16x2 display. On widows side I had FTDI dll and some little UI project with visual studio to show time and data on that display. FT245 had async fifo interface and with DLL you directly read/write to those fifos. That was more easy to use compared to uart :) After that I have been using their serial cables. Also modules supported IO pins. Also many JTAG cables was using FTDI chips. I think adafruit now is just to do packaging it to easy to use python library.
Excellent tutorial! Small correction, at 11:40 video shows two 47 Ohm resistors(yellow,purple,black), referred as "470 Ohm current limiting resistors". Keep up the good work!
Thanks for this. Whilst the resistors are there to drop the voltage, this in turn drops current, and resisitors so positioned in series with an LED are always referred to as "current limiting resistors". See, eg (and lots of places!): www.mouser.com/blog/dont-burn-out-calculating-led-current-limiting-resistor
No one has came close to doing a 65mm x 30mm form factor comparison video. I’m very interested in a thorough price and performance comparison and availability of as many boards in this specific form factor as possible. Raspberry pi zero 2 W Orange pie? Mango pie? Banana pie? Rock pie Radxa 0 Etc I don’t know how many there are but comparative information on the top 6 to 8 alternates would be invaluable for everyone. Long time fan and follower. Thank you for everything!
Amazing explanation! I managed to make it work under Windows using PyCharm with no issues at all! (It is important to change driver to libusb-win with zadig)
Having a DIY-NAS myself which runs on top of a low powered ATOM board, I know I would make use of either one of these if I just knew a meaningful purpose for those GPIOs in my case.
Amazingly, the Adafruit module is currently in stock at their store. That module, and the FT232 chip that it exposes, were sadly among the items that became Unobtainium during the component shortage.
YAHOO! What a wonderful thing to have access to. How empowering! 1. I note you mention using 440 ohm resistors. Normally one would think to use 220 or so. Curious as to the difference. 2. Would you consider a video on using a realtime database such as influx db or some such, and perhaps something on a UI such as Graphana. Yes, there are some on RUclips, but I find your videos MUCH easier to follow. Yeah. This made my day! Thanks Chris!
Well done! I am looking forward to making use of some older hardware that is just waiting to be up-cycled into something useful like a weather station or home automation item.
Note that the FT232H does not support clock stretching on I2C. Not a problem for most I2C peripherals, but if you have an I2C slave running on a micro it may well be a problem.
Given its on PC, I totally would use this with hdf5py and store in that. This actually makes things so much more accessible without needing bunches of soc to then send to central computer then to pump into a hdf5 file. Shortens the process.
well done EC, I remember people doing something similar in the 70s with an Apple II using it as a micro-controller (the term micro-controller didn't exist then). You could write a basic program to monitor sensors, etc. that output variable voltage (e.g. thermocouple), via the game paddle port as GP I/O since the paddle potentiometer was analog & translated voltage into values between 0 and 255.
actually, the apple II translated the resistance of the game paddle, not the voltage across it. It counted how long a capacitor on the main board took to discharge across the resistor. The great Woz never added an extra chip if he didn't need to.
With raspberry Pi boards being kind of hard to obtain at reasonable costs, this is a great little touch into getting the same kind of projects normally run on Pi's to be buildable on any typical computer.
If you feel quite adventurous and have a spare VGA/DVI/HDMI port on your PC or laptop (and ideally run Linux, not sure how Windows would allow you to do this), then you've got access to a 5 V rail and an I2C bus. I remember mitxela getting one of those small 128x64 I2C OLED screens to work with I2C over the HDMI port on his laptop a while back (making a quite impractical, yet ridiculous computer monitor). I could definitely see myself making a simple HDMI to I2C breakout for hooking up different devices (perhaps with an optional voltage regulator so that I could hook up 3.3 V stuff as well), like sensors, I/O expanders (giving me regular GPIO) etc.
Made a similar comment. The crazy thing is you can use PCF8564/8575 I²C I/O chips... 8 (or 16!!!) I/O pins, times 8 I²C addresses, times *1 I²C bus per video output* (VGA, DVI, HDMI, built-in laptop screen...)... You could potentially have access to a minimum of 192 regular GPIO pins on a regular junk desktop or laptop. Downside is, you have to adapt your code for this extra step of interrogating the chips, it is not a seamless accessible GPIO.
Back in the day, standard serial and printer ports could be used as GPIO. That was the first time I was controlling electrical devices using a computer.
Exactly what I was thinking of, anyway, I think using parallel port was easier to start with since it doesn't require any coding/decoding circuit
@@ahmad-murery Those were the days my friend, we thought they'd never end. But they did. Personally I think a picoW or ESP32 has so much more to offer, so why did they bother with this ?
@@hilldweller2 So true my friend👍,
anyway, I think having a direct access to GPIO will open the doors again for some applications (windows apps for example) to easily read/control external machines at a low cost.
Oh yes. The banded wires. Radio Shak to the rescue.
Actually, you could probably do something almost identical today. You can set up serial connections to MCUs, although they will admittedly actually be routed via USB. Send bits over the computer's pseudo serial port to indicate whether pins should be high or low.
I worked for an industrial controls company back in the early to mid-1990s. All that equipment used to cost tens of thousands of dollars. Now you're showing us the current state of the art. My 1990s self is marveling at what has become of that industry.
This is not the state of the art. This is a very very basic version the state of the distilled tens of thousands because it is highly accurate and certified for a lot more uses.
@UKsystems - You're talking to a guy who used to program Allen-Bradley PLCs using ladder logic. You could buy a BASIC module for it but it would cost a fortune. I was around long enough to see Allen-Bradley lose a lot of market share to smaller (much smaller), faster PLCs from Japan as well as domestic competitors.
Just seeing that functionality on a single board computer 30+ years later is jaw dropping.
@ you said current state of fear and this isn’t so you were trying to argue the fact that 30 years ago this was very advanced but you mentioned current things in your comment please decide
My dad worked in industrial refrigeration and designed control systems for them in the 90s. I am marveling at these current cheap technologies for similar reasons.
@@GizmoFromPizmo my dad programmed PLCs with ladder logic too. He would also be impressed if he were still here.
GPIO is such a nice thing to have. I always enjoyed having GPIO available on my Commodore 64 for projects. When everything went to "standard PC" I had to do go through all sorts of nonsense hacking the parallel port into a GPIO-like interface. Now we finally have good options again.
There used to be ISA bus and that was easy to turn into GPIO. Unfortunately that went 20 years ago.
I did a lot of this using 8255s, 4066s, optoisolators and such.
@@adilsongoliveira I was going to write an integrator program for windows for a RF spectrometer and this is exactly what I was looking for ( both reading and turning on/off small valves), though, I'm going to attempt this in C++ instead of python.
LOAD"*",8,1 !!! lol
We need more people like you in the world, Chris. Thank you for doing what you do.
I can't get excited about the board, but, oh boy, have you produced the definitive video on Superb Soldering. That was awesome.
I love you, Samantha the soldering iron!!!
Anyway, another great video! Another example of how anything is possible with computing. :)
Thanks for your support. :)
@@ExplainingComputers Aw, you're welcome, my friend! I hope that you're doing okay today. :D
This is a really important video, as this is the sort of thing that could be used for school science. Get a cheap old PC, get one of these boards, and start to create your own monitoring system built.
Lots of potential with it, thanks for making this video.
I like your thinking here. :)
@ExplainingComputers Is it possible to do same with old smartphone an it would give it a new life?? If yes then I have a request to make a detailed video on setting this up on some good python ide on smartphone. Thank you❤ and I like your explanation old school and easy to understand.
Wonderful!!!!! I have a bmax B2-S arriving today (caught a great sale/discount, $104 versus usual $130-$160). Needed it since I threw away several old very slow laptops..
I've been looking for details on how to handle sensors, I2C and DIO natively using python from a "PC" and it sure looks like this is the definitive guide.
Like others I had missed several steps when looking on my own. I have a ton of ESP32s that work great but I also wanted to be able to log, graph and view the data easily under linux or Windows without needing a separate device to handle the data acquisition.. this seems to fit the bill.
I've always loved this channel!! Been working professionally with electronics and computers since 1973
Finally! After a 40 year wait there is now an affordable way to give a PC as much functionality as the BBC Micro's user port. Another great video, the code is a bit more complex than poking to the User 6522.
Yeah but would you really want to bit bang a BME280 over the BBC user port? It's nice to have a library to do that for you.
Absolutely fantastic content ... as Brian said (paraphrase here) you make it look easy! In reality it is, but it seems easier when I watch you do it. Thanks for sharing and the work you do making anything seem possible.
editing the video helps too. 🙂
Good topic indeed, but even more: your way of presenting contents (here and other videos) is pleasurable and enlightening. Thank you for all that!
I appreciate you continuing to show off different aspects of computer I don't tend to think about, or am otherwise unaware of. Thank you.
Thanks for all your videos, Chris. This video (GPIO for any PC or Laptop: Adafruit FT232H) is something I never knew was possible with MacOS. Too cool!
I am very grateful to you for the new video! Now there is a chance to expand the functionality of a retro laptop, before that I theoretically represented communication via LPT and a CNC machine 🎉
My first job out of high school was working at a radio shop where I learned to tune radios (before PLL frequency synthesis), install and service "car phones" and most interestingly build police squad cars by installing radios and light bars. I have several colorful stories from those days, like the time I repeatedly pressed a "man down" button on a portable police radio before I knew what it was, or the one where I did a "test drive" of a newly built squad car like the Dukes of Hazard. But this story comes to mind because of something in this video.
One aspect of the construction of a squad car was to add circuitry for something called "wig-wag" lights. That is the connection of relays to flash the headlights alternately left and right about once per second. The LED's in this video are alternating at about that rate and reminded me of this time I left work exactly on time, and I was in a hurry to get home. I was speeding like usual and behind me I saw the dreadful wig-wags and really thought me house was cooked. I dug out my license, registration and proof of insurance. Well, I was surprised when the officer didn't ask for them but addressed me by name. It was Sargeant Deeghan who came to visit me at work but I wasn't there. So he chased me down on the highway! He wanted to ask about the function of one of the radios and didn't want to wait until tomorrow, ha ha. Well I laughed all the way home after he also gave me a verbal warning about my speed. That day was a good day to have the police Sargeant as my friend.
13:15 So then, I hope you will remember that an alternating pair of lights is called "wig-wag" lights. 😀
Thanks for posting this! With Raspberry Pi's being so difficult to find this looks to be an excellent alternative!
Now this is a product that is seriously needed! Thanks for reporting on it! I tend to be slow to catch the newest trends these days.
Just bought one. Thanks to EC for demoing it. One thing though my OCD is going crazy at exit () rather than exit()
I've never seen this channel before but as a 45 year old I have to commend the style of video and how reminiscent it is of quality BBC science programmes from the 80s!
Thanks, and thanks for watching. :)
I wish stuff like this existed 30 years ago.. The first Computer I used to control external devices was a Commodore 64 (Expansion Port) to control an Amateur Radio Repeater on the Two Meter Band... Using opto-isolators to provide the isolation between 5 and 12 volt Supplies.. It was fun, and very rewarding to make it work.. (Especially) incorporating a phone patch (all before) Cellular Phones.
First time I "talked" to anything through an UART-like connect was to clear SMART registers on a bricked Seagate drive (the ones that once in a few hundred cycles froze on start-up). Felt so haxxory!
I'm sorry, but it's just NOT a proper Sunday without a very informative & delightful visit with our true gentleman of a friend Christopher & Explaining Computers! 😇
I feel inordinately pleased to have reproduced your flashing LEDs using the MCP2221A breakout board. Thanks for this video - it opens a world of possibilities!
Fantastic. This sounds like a great result. As you say, with things setup and working, there are so many possibilities . . .
As I always say, every Sunday morning is Christmas morning when you listen to Christopher!
Very nice way to use the pc and IO thanks for the instructions I have just moved to Linux Mint Deb so will have a go as soon as I purchase the FT232H board.
Good luck!
Great video. If you have a BME280 with a different address, like in this case, you can simply specify it when you initialize the library instead of editing the value in the library. This also makes installing updates much easier.
Good to know, thanks. :)
At 5:19
Samantha the soldering iron....
I do not remember seeing Samantha before! Nice to meet you!!
Sorry for being tardy, I’m training for a long distance running event in April. Excellent lesson today, thanks.
I always wondered why I never see these things being advertised everywhere. This is really handy for makers.
This is an interesting video, I knew some were saying that Mini PCs were the way to go as a Pi alternative, but never understood how you could use it like a Pi until this video. I still would like to get a Pi and play around with it as I am surrounded by PCs. I wouldn't be playing around with it in the development sense at the start, just playing around with it like any other PC to see what it's like and doing PC style things with it.
Great for testing code & stuff before you connect things to your precious Pi.
Thanks for that video!
Fantastic! A product review with a 'road test' and a run through the Owner's Guide. Thank you, Professor...🇺🇸 😎👍☕
Great tutorial! I like how these breakout boards are dirt cheap and you can just use a computer you already have. Unlike the RBP, cheap x86 computers to run linux and python are everywhere.
Direct and indirect IO is a matter of interpretation. Fundamentally both the FTDI and Pico approaches use USB to communicate IO reads and writes. It is 100% possible to load a Pico with firmware such that it emulates exactly the FTDI part.
Another good day's work, Chris.
I always saw the Raspberry Pi's main use not being for teaching juniors coding but in the lab recording data reliably. Your video has me thinking of using it with a breakout board for ventilation control system in a busy bar/restaurant.
Cheers.
While a green led when plugging something in is very exciting indeed, it's even more exciting to see a 'breadcrumb' on a breadboard (at 12:29 near the ft232ic). 😆
I guess next would be a Blender video about creating and then printing a new case for the B-Max B1 Plus with integrated, easily accessible FT232H pin header.
Thanks for a very nice video and Happy Easter! 🐇🐰🥚
I only noticed the crumb in editing. No idea how it got there! Thanks for watching. :)
What fun! You turned the mini PC into a PC Pi. Looking forward to your next video!
Another great video, Chris - hadn't realised these breakout boards for adding GPIO to a PC existed, could be very handy!
Have a good rest of your weekend Christopher. As Always, Be Smart and Stay Safe.
I thought about doing some logging, but rather than connecting sensors to a PC USB port I'd use an esp32 or pico w, setup a simple web page and retrieve the values using a cron job (wget) and storing in a csv. I could do logging this way on many sensors in different locations with less software libraries. Also an esp32 is cheaper than a ft232h.
that and there is firmata or Python picod module
Lovely graphics with nice typefont on over-labels. Great video.
This is excellent and very timely! I have just ordered some sensors and knew I would have to get down to using Micropython, GPIO etc. This video has given some ideas about helping my daughter to use sensors on a PC, despite having no Raspberry experience. I find you have already issued videos which will be really useful such as your RPi Weather Station. Thanks!
Good luck -- and you are right, there are several of my previous videos that may be of assistance -- including the one where I built an anemometer. :)
@@ExplainingComputers AND the RPi Plant Watering and Time Lapse Photography videos! I've only been thinking recently that I ought to get down to time lapse with a Camera Module 3. Thanks again
Nice to see Adafruit get a plug. Nice demo/tutorial, too!
Excellent demonstration of democratization to access the world of GPIO. Great job! Respectful greetings to Samantha for her high precision work!
Fascinating tool. It'll likely to provide respite to people suffering RPi shortage.
Interesting tutorial like always.
I tapped the SMbus to use i2c devices. You just have to find access to the signals somewhere.
Cool vid!
Thanks Chris, I'll keep that in mind. It's definitely an eye-opening idea with great potential for good things. Checked price - in my regular shop it's 20 GBP.
This is so very exciting.
Chris you just made my day.
I have a couple old low power Thin Clients that I installed Linux Mint on that only draw about 6 watts when running. So with the Adafruit interface It could easily be used for temperature and presents detection as well as the most important "Flashing LEDs" Yes!!.
Haven't really played with Python much, so this is great motivation to do so. Thank you again Chris for an excellent tutorial. 👍😎
That is a great way to get GPIO on a PC without much muss or fuss. Also, it was nice to meet Stephanie - I never knew that was her name :)
This is one of my favorite channels. I learned a lot from them.
You packed a lot in this one. It's like you've done it before. I'm not sure if I could do all that in a week. I usually have several missed steps and mistakes. I screw up so much, that I account for it when I plan any project.
Chris cheats. He has two Sundays in every week. ;)
BTW, your Bmax mini PC presentation was so compelling that I ordered a Bmax from China. They were fresh out of stock locally which was probably your fault. :)
Over my head Mr. Barnatt. You are such an intelligent fellow!
Its a wonderful module that gives computer direct access to gpio's
Thanks Chris !!
Thank you very much for this material! Brilliant as always. I can't wait for the next episode.
always such interesting videos with my muffin and hot tea. 🥳 Back in the DOS-PC days people came up with clever printer port projects. Now with these sweet little add-on boards the creative ideas are fantastic even 16 bit+ ADC/DAC channels. 😎 Thanks a lot.
We had a "type and talk" device.. connect to the printer port and whatever you sent would be spoken aloud.. circa 1984
@@timnixon2889 very interesting. Thanks.
@@timnixon2889 There was a board that B G micro used to sell way back then that had a Couple of TI speech synth chips on it. You could connect it to a serial port them just send text to it.
" Back in the DOS-PC days"
Dos was the key! Because Dos ran in real mode you could do anything. You could read and write directly to any IO port or memory address. Obviously modern operating systems don't allow that. With modern operating systems applications run at PL3 and the kernel and maybe some low level device drivers run at PL0. That means that normal software cannot access IO ports directly. That means to do this under modern operating systems you must write a device driver and create somekind of API that will be used by your applications to make calls to that driver. That complicates things quite a bit. Also some modern operating systems, like the newer versions of windows even require drivers to be approved and signed by microsoft. That usually puts it out of reach by the average hobbyist.
Interestingly enough, one exception to this is RS-232 com ports. These can still work because there are drivers and API calls already built into windows that allow you to open, close, read, and write to those ports. Thanks to backward compatibility with old school terminal applications this still exists. Unfortunately RS-232 ports are getting harder and harder to find on modern PCs.
This is very exciting ,and opens up many more possibilities for test and measurement systems.
perfect timing, i was looking at those since yesterday and considered buying one
There are many ways to give a PC gpio capability. As noted in other comments, a PI or Arduino can be used by running a protocol over the serial link. The protocol used by the FT232H could be supported on other platforms. In the past I have used Web Midi in chrome browser to do gpio over a Midi interface to an Arduino. ( Optical isolation both ways with 5 pin Din Midi ) depending on latency etc, you may want to run some parts on the PI/Arduino and others on the PC.
Adafruit has got some really great stuff - I would love to see more of it (:
This is a very powerful and useful tutorial for not only GPIO, but also for Python... Thatnk you..
Awesome stuff. such a wide range of qwicc and other boards waiting to talk to a general purpose PC, the possibilities are endless. Thanks for the introduction to electronics for PCs.
Thank you for this. I have no idea why this should be usefull instead of just using a RPI or a Pico - but that's exactly, why I'm intrigued to try it. :)
From the comment i see, that other people like me, feel it's a time travel back to the days where computers were more electronic than they are today. We used serial and parallel ports if we had to control some self invented hardware. :)
I'm trying to find some information about a Danish guy, who in approx 1995-2000 created a smart home, with a Commodore 64 and a huge amount of cables going to coffee maker, windows locks, door locks, and thermostats. He could even call his home with a telephone, and control some of the devices pressing different keys. :)
They made a small news clip on TV about it back then, and i wish i could see that again
Thanks, Chris. It’s always good to know the options we have nowadays to do whatever our (engineering) hearts desire.
Whilst I don't own anything that uses the FT232H, the MCP2221A is a really great chip to work with, and plus, it is available in 14-pin DIP form factor, making one's own PCBs for it practical.
I have one of these MCP chips mounted in my PC tower, controlling a third LED on the front bezel. I wrote a Win32 C++ app that makes it turn this LED on or off, depending on whether my NVIDIA graphics is "hard at work" or not ("throttle reason is not code-16/idle") by ways of the NVML API.
Very cool.
Thanks Chris, just the ticket. Adafruit have also provided a port for the Pico as the bridge which I intend to try as well.
For the much lesser cost you can actually use ESP32 boards directly and get more pins and other options. And also control from the USB port.
Different target market
@@petermuller608I don't understand how this target audience is different.
Someone could easy take an ESP32, make it spit out all its GPIO outputs to the serial com, and (maybe) also take inputs as applicable, and someone could easily write a python script to parse that on the general PC side.
A fantastic utility, GPIO. A little tricky to setup but I'm sure with your video things are going to be very easy. Great video!
I'll have some projects for this one, but I've gotta walk before I can run. Thanks for another great video.
Greetings Steve.
What an interesting video I never cease to be amazed by Chris's content. I didn't know about Samantha, she does make very neat soldered connections!! It's got me thinking of other applications it could be applied to, like a model railway (railroad) layout, signalling, block control & setting points etc, the code would be quite interesting to write but what an experience :)
Excellent application idea!
@@GizmoFromPizmo It just makes me wonder how long it'd take to do the coding?
Excellent video. I’m just about ready to try my first project utilizing GPIO. It’ll be a garage door opener running on a Raspberry Pi.
Great video I actually wondered if this existed after I started playing with the GPIO on Raspberry pi.
This is fantastic! I’m just getting started with electronics and the Pi’s GPIO, and just assumed I’d have to dive into the SBC ecosystem. It’s just awesome I can use my x86 and x64 relics to explore GPIO, although with a little research I guess I could have accomplished this w the Pico and sub variants. Thanks!
I'd say that the way Chris has shown it here on the PC is no different to using an SBC, it's the same compiler and IDE! What would make this more PC compatible would be some API calls you can make from say Visual Basic or MS Excel or even batch files or scripts.
My main projects that I will be working on is a weather station that has wind speed and direction and a plant irrigation system (house plant watering - because I am away a lot).
Waited since forever for something like this, though there are probably dozens of ways to do it. +10 years ago Arduino, etc came at the right time for stand alone projects. It got in the way of development for direct USB GPIO to/from the computer.
Very interesting as ever I appreciate how Much you explains things in your videos
This reminds me about my first FTDI project. FT245R, AT90S8515, and 16x2 display. On widows side I had FTDI dll and some little UI project with visual studio to show time and data on that display. FT245 had async fifo interface and with DLL you directly read/write to those fifos. That was more easy to use compared to uart :)
After that I have been using their serial cables. Also modules supported IO pins. Also many JTAG cables was using FTDI chips.
I think adafruit now is just to do packaging it to easy to use python library.
Excellent tutorial! Small correction, at 11:40 video shows two 47 Ohm resistors(yellow,purple,black), referred as "470 Ohm current limiting resistors". Keep up the good work!
Thanks for this. Whilst the resistors are there to drop the voltage, this in turn drops current, and resisitors so positioned in series with an LED are always referred to as "current limiting resistors". See, eg (and lots of places!): www.mouser.com/blog/dont-burn-out-calculating-led-current-limiting-resistor
To avoid having to reenter the environment variable each time you startup Linux you can add
export BLINKA_FT232H=1
to, for example, your .bashrc file
Good tip, thanks for sharing.
or you can add
"import os
os.environ["BLINKA_FT232H"] = "1"
import board
import digitalio"
at the beggining of your python script
The PCB close up shots are getting even more amazing!
:)
No one has came close to doing a 65mm x 30mm form factor comparison video. I’m very interested in a thorough price and performance comparison and availability of as many boards in this specific form factor as possible.
Raspberry pi zero 2 W
Orange pie?
Mango pie?
Banana pie?
Rock pie
Radxa 0
Etc I don’t know how many there are but comparative information on the top 6 to 8 alternates would be invaluable for everyone.
Long time fan and follower. Thank you for everything!
I am planning Pi Zero form-factor comparison video.
Excuse me. RUclips has malfunctioned. I shall move this comment down where it belongs.
Amazing explanation! I managed to make it work under Windows using PyCharm with no issues at all! (It is important to change driver to libusb-win with zadig)
Your videos never fail to impress. Thank you.
Back in the Borland Delphi days I used to use a Delcom IC it used USB and you could control about 10 leds it was great.
What a neat device. Wish some laptops and PCs just came with a user friendly GPIO though.
Having a DIY-NAS myself which runs on top of a low powered ATOM board, I know I would make use of either one of these if I just knew a meaningful purpose for those GPIOs in my case.
Amazingly, the Adafruit module is currently in stock at their store. That module, and the FT232 chip that it exposes, were sadly among the items that became Unobtainium during the component shortage.
YAHOO! What a wonderful thing to have access to. How empowering!
1. I note you mention using 440 ohm resistors. Normally one would think to use 220 or so. Curious as to the difference.
2. Would you consider a video on using a realtime database such as influx db or some such, and perhaps something on a UI such as Graphana. Yes, there are some on RUclips, but I find your videos MUCH easier to follow.
Yeah. This made my day!
Thanks Chris!
Well done! I am looking forward to making use of some older hardware that is just waiting to be up-cycled into something useful like a weather station or home automation item.
Note that the FT232H does not support clock stretching on I2C. Not a problem for most I2C peripherals, but if you have an I2C slave running on a micro it may well be a problem.
Given its on PC, I totally would use this with hdf5py and store in that. This actually makes things so much more accessible without needing bunches of soc to then send to central computer then to pump into a hdf5 file. Shortens the process.
well done EC, I remember people doing something similar in the 70s with an Apple II using it as a micro-controller (the term micro-controller didn't exist then). You could write a basic program to monitor sensors, etc. that output variable voltage (e.g. thermocouple), via the game paddle port as GP I/O since the paddle potentiometer was analog & translated voltage into values between 0 and 255.
The first microcontroller was developed in 1971, and the word was also first used in that year. It just wasn't a very commonly used word until later.
actually, the apple II translated the resistance of the game paddle, not the voltage across it. It counted how long a capacitor on the main board took to discharge across the resistor. The great Woz never added an extra chip if he didn't need to.
@@ericthecyclist The original IBM PC used this method as well; the cheapest possible analog to digital converter.
what can I say. Did not make the top 100. bummer. it was fun to watch. good info. good to know stuff!
With raspberry Pi boards being kind of hard to obtain at reasonable costs, this is a great little touch into getting the same kind of projects normally run on Pi's to be buildable on any typical computer.
Great tutorial. Just another example of your wonderful lessons. Thanks.
Ah, I love these Sunday morning hacking sessions with Chris.
Good one! Thanks!
Thanks for your support, appreciated. :)
Watched for years you are brilliant
Many thanks. :)
Thanks, it was an awesome experience.
I learned so much.
Much success to you. 😊😊
If you feel quite adventurous and have a spare VGA/DVI/HDMI port on your PC or laptop (and ideally run Linux, not sure how Windows would allow you to do this), then you've got access to a 5 V rail and an I2C bus. I remember mitxela getting one of those small 128x64 I2C OLED screens to work with I2C over the HDMI port on his laptop a while back (making a quite impractical, yet ridiculous computer monitor).
I could definitely see myself making a simple HDMI to I2C breakout for hooking up different devices (perhaps with an optional voltage regulator so that I could hook up 3.3 V stuff as well), like sensors, I/O expanders (giving me regular GPIO) etc.
Made a similar comment. The crazy thing is you can use PCF8564/8575 I²C I/O chips... 8 (or 16!!!) I/O pins, times 8 I²C addresses, times *1 I²C bus per video output* (VGA, DVI, HDMI, built-in laptop screen...)... You could potentially have access to a minimum of 192 regular GPIO pins on a regular junk desktop or laptop. Downside is, you have to adapt your code for this extra step of interrogating the chips, it is not a seamless accessible GPIO.