#82121 - Mr. Picklesworth - Thu May 04, 2006 2:42 am
Has anyone played around with it?
http://natrium42.com/projects/serial.html
I'm thinking about turning my PassMe into a basic (yes, I know, very basic and effectively useless) USB port.
One project I am currently eyeing is a beautiful, low res, optical mouse scanner which I discovered in an old email to myself...
Has anyone played around with the serial interface and come up with anything of their own?
Would an optical mouse connected to a USB port on a PassMe actually work? (Judging by the voltage difference between some random optical mouse and that available, it looks like a bit of toying may be required).
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#82220 - Lynx - Thu May 04, 2006 4:41 pm
Sorry, the USB interface makes the DS a device, not a host. Basically, it'd be like plugging two USB mouses together.. not much good.
But, it's main potential is to allow the DS to send/receive data from a computer.. Like hot syncing a PDA.
Edit: Unfortuanatly for the PassMe USB interface, we have WiFi now.. so you could use it to do anything you wanted to do with the USB interface. That is, as long as you can use the WiFi.
#82223 - tepples - Thu May 04, 2006 4:51 pm
| Lynx wrote: |
| Unfortuanatly for the PassMe USB interface, we have WiFi now.. so you could use it to do anything you wanted to do with the USB interface. That is, as long as you can use the WiFi. |
More PCs in use came with onboard USB controllers than onboard 802.11b NICs.
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#82288 - Mr. Picklesworth - Thu May 04, 2006 11:51 pm
Ah, I thought it was the other way around :P
Oh well, still some stuff to be played with there...
Thanks, Tepples!
Still curious, though.
I guess the other devices that can be tossed on there, like that GPS module, are still regular devices? ( Presumably because they are not USB devices :P )
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#82325 - HyperHacker - Fri May 05, 2006 7:20 am
There's absolutely no way the DS can be a USB host, even if you don't really care about power consumption?
#82347 - tepples - Fri May 05, 2006 1:07 pm
The power issues are easy: you'd need to run it into a self-powered hub. A "self-powered" hub uses a power brick connected to AC mains and can supply power to downstream devices.
The hard part is getting a USB host controller onto a DS card or GBA card.
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-- Where is he?
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#82358 - Lynx - Fri May 05, 2006 3:26 pm
| Quote: |
| I guess the other devices that can be tossed on there, like that GPS module, are still regular devices? ( Presumably because they are not USB devices :P ) |
Correct, they are standard serial devices. You can hook any serial device to it as long as you have a CMOS level device, or a level converter (converter is also shown on natrium42's site). Because, most devices with serial ports have their own power.
Now, the DS could be a USB host like tepples said, if you supply external power. There are plenty of host controller chips available that could easily "integrate" with the PassMe2 design. But, who want's to carry around a battery pack to power the USB device(s)?
#82376 - tepples - Fri May 05, 2006 8:42 pm
| Lynx wrote: |
| You can hook any serial device to it as long as you have a CMOS level device, or a level converter (converter is also shown on natrium42's site). |
By the way, Dreamcast serial is CMOS level, so you might be able to adapt the Dreamcast coder's cable schematic if you want to figure out how to build an RS232 cable. Or it might be possible to build a DC to DS cable without a level shifter.
| Lynx wrote: |
| But, who want's to carry around a battery pack to power the USB device(s)? |
The same people who will use an M3 (or worse yet Datel's microdrive) in a DS lite.
_________________
-- Where is he?
-- Who?
-- You know, the human.
-- I think he moved to Tilwick.