Micro to PC UNIVERSAL INTERFACE

[amgen]

Developing a PC program which serially interfaces to micros... not the first out there BUT, which will display in textboxes continously sent serial data, also send settings, data RTC stuff etc. The user interface looks good enough to be used continously.PIC end uses INT for rcv so program isn't just waiting around for serial. A FTDI USB adapter makes for easy hookup and use.
The PC apparently needs the fairly receint Microsoft .Net framework stuff to work. Currently testing deployment functions etc. Looking for feedback and VB help from more experienced programmers.
E-mail on or off this forum
Don
[email protected]

[amgen]

adding Jpg for serial concept. Please check my program. You can build your pic project around this interface.
don f.

[mister_e]

This is something i'm fairly experimented in. I prefer to use USB PIC though.

[amgen]

Thankyou sir for replying, I was getting lonely here. USB PIC good , but can only learn one thing at a time and VB.net might take me 50-100 years to learn. Also my interface program works with usb or straight serial, and any PIC's with HW serial will only take 2 pins to do much work and programming is pretty easy ?
Your opinion on my PIC stuff ?
1) set up an array of 100, more or less to hold mem on pic
2) small asm for RCV interrupt
-check for start char say "~"
-take all next chars (100 max) or up to end char say ";", one at a time
-put them into array reserved locations
-turn off int, set some flag to inform Basic to do stuff on data
3) Basic rummages through array for instructions and data, clears mem and resets flag and interrupts
Wasn't that hard to set that stuff up.

I built the interface to work with that layout. I used the microsoft VB.Net click-once to deploy the program which can be deleted with the remove programs in windows.
Since I don't have a web now, I just e-mail the program now as requested.
I 'try' to make stuff straight forward, easy to understand so if you use the interface, you could tell me if I am nuts!
Adding one more jpg of Info Page.
don f.

[mister_e]

Hi Don,
looks like a reasonable scheme to me. I may agree that serial comm could be easier when you begin as it's already built-in in VB.

However, if you want to do some USB learning, i would suggest you those 2 bellow.

USBDemo, something to learn USB a little bit
http://www.picbasic.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=5418

Using EasyHID with VBExpress 2005 (maybe .NET as well)
http://www.picbasic.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=6463&