Controlling LED using VC++

Ram Murali

Hi All, Can anyone please suggest me some ideas about how to control LED's using VC++? Thanks in advance.

Regards, Ram

Cedric Moonen

:confused: Which LED ?

Cédric Moonen Software developer
Charting control [v1.2 - Updated]

Hamid Taebi

Can you more explain?

WhiteSky

Ram Murali

I am trying to design a software to communicate with a LED using serial port to On/Off the LED. so any help regarding this will highly be appreciated.

Regards, Ram

Cedric Moonen

You can't communicate with a LED using the serial port (a LED doesn't 'communicate'). You probably meant that you communicate with some kind of harware (like a microcontroler) that will switch your LED on or off. Well, then just send some specific packet on the link that your microcontroller can recognize. Where are you stuck exactly ? Because it is really vague...

Cédric Moonen Software developer
Charting control [v1.2 - Updated]

Ram Murali

Oooopzzzz. I just started to do some research regarding this to gather some knowledge about controlling LEDs using software. I understood by your answer that i should need some extra hardware(Microcontroller) to control LED. Then I must go and find something about microcontroller and controlling LED first. Anyway thanx a lot for your information. Atleast i got some idea abt this. Do you have any idea about this without microcontroller. ( that means jus with common electronic items such as breadboards, resistors, capacitors and transistors.)

Regards, Ram

Cedric Moonen

Maybe what you could do is use one of the control line of the serial port (like CTS, but you need to check which one you could use) and then connect your LED with a resistor between this line and the ground. But, I don't think this is the most appropriate forum to discuss about that because it is not in fact a programming question...

Cédric Moonen Software developer
Charting control [v1.2 - Updated]

kakan

You can connect LED's to some of the pins of the parallell printer port. You will need to use serial resistors, though. Else, chances are that you will break either the printer driver circuitry (in the computer), or the LEDs themself. You can use inpout32 (search for it) to control the individual pins of the parallell port.

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Ram Murali

K thank you very much for your valuable information. I think your information is more than enough for me. I think i mus go with the microcontroller. Thanks again.

Regards, Ram

kakan

If you can use the parallel printer port instead, see my response.

Alcohol. The cause of, and the solution to, all of life's problems - Homer Simpson

toxcct

Cedric Moonen wrote:

Which LED ?

THE Led :rolleyes:

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Mike ONeill

If you are willing to use the parallel port for driving of the LED, as Kahan has suggested, then here's a good article that might help: "Parallel port interfacing made easy: Simple circuits and programs to show how to use PC parallel port output capabilities" at http://www.epanorama.net/circuits/parallel_output.html[^] Note that under current Windows OSs, the outportb() function is no longer usable, and indeed all functions that directly access the port are not usable. You will need a prot driver, as noted in the cited article. Mike

Joan M

I believe that you can do it using the parallel port using 24 volts that you should make available from your code in one of the port pins. We have here working something like that but in that case we make an alarm to sound and we have used a relay and some cables, but only the parallel port. If we are capable to make an alarm to sound, I'm sure that you'll be able to enlight a led. Hope this helps.