CodeGuru Home VC++ / MFC / C++ .NET / C# Visual Basic VB Forums Developer.com
Results 1 to 3 of 3
  1. #1
    Join Date
    Nov 2004
    Location
    LA. California Raiders #1 AKA: Gangsta Yoda™
    Posts
    616

    Using GPIO Pins, need to write driver?

    Has anyone had any experience with using General Purpose Input Output pins on 3rd party boards?

    The board will be proprietary but we are prototyping based on a few possible dev boards like Advantech boards
    I found the GPIO pins to be something we would like to use since they are IDE'like ribbon cables that we can connect to a custom ISA socket.

    Looking at the .NET Micro Framework but it uses drivers to interface with some popular boards.
    Found the WDK as a possibility but other than creating a hello world driver I'm at a loss on how to connect to the cards pins.

    Thanks for any help and sorry if this is not in the right forum.
    VB/Office Guru™ (AKA: Gangsta Yoda™)
    VB Forums - Super Moderator 2001-Present

    Microsoft MVP 2006-2011

    Please use [code]your code goes in here[/code] tags when posting code.

    Senior Software Engineer MCP, BSEE, CET
    VS 2012 Premium, VS 6.0 Enterprise SP6, VSTO, Office Ultimate 2010, Windows 7 Ultimate
    Star Wars Gangsta Rap SE Reputations & Rating Posts Office Primary Interop AssembliesAdvanced VB/Office Guru™ Word SpellChecker™.NETAdvanced VB/Office Guru™ Word SpellChecker™ VB6Outlook Global Address ListVB6/Crystal Report Ex.VB6/CR Print Setup Dialog Ex.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Apr 2000
    Location
    Belgium (Europe)
    Posts
    4,626

    Re: Using GPIO Pins, need to write driver?

    you need a driver for the hardware, you can't directly "talk" to hardware in Win32 at the app level. ANd writing drivers isn't something you'll find help/assistance for easily because so few people come in contact with it. You'll need to know how to write a driver in general, and you'll need the technical manuals/data on how to actually access the hardware device.

    And the it's all a matter of how the driver is made accessible to the App level, and there are tons of different approaches.
    IOCTL calls is the low level one
    A clean COM interface is the other end of the spectrum
    I've also seen IO boards that need you to output data to a pseudo printer/com port.



    You could probably have a look at the arduino project. This is a "small" programmable board that has IO pins (among others), and it's entirely open source and you'll find sources on the actual windows drivers etc. As well as tons of actual programs how to do something usefull with it.

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Nov 2004
    Location
    LA. California Raiders #1 AKA: Gangsta Yoda™
    Posts
    616

    Re: Using GPIO Pins, need to write driver?

    Thanks for the reply. Yes that is what Ive been finding that there is very little help and info out there.

    I have an Advantech, Phidgits and somewhere around here we may have the Ardrino. Ive even seen the Netdruino board which looks good but weak for our needs. If I could get a board to work with .NET that would be awesome.

    Ive been messing around with the WDK and created a sample Kernal Mode Driver Function as well as a User Mode Driver Funciton but just got it complied off the templates.
    VB/Office Guru™ (AKA: Gangsta Yoda™)
    VB Forums - Super Moderator 2001-Present

    Microsoft MVP 2006-2011

    Please use [code]your code goes in here[/code] tags when posting code.

    Senior Software Engineer MCP, BSEE, CET
    VS 2012 Premium, VS 6.0 Enterprise SP6, VSTO, Office Ultimate 2010, Windows 7 Ultimate
    Star Wars Gangsta Rap SE Reputations & Rating Posts Office Primary Interop AssembliesAdvanced VB/Office Guru™ Word SpellChecker™.NETAdvanced VB/Office Guru™ Word SpellChecker™ VB6Outlook Global Address ListVB6/Crystal Report Ex.VB6/CR Print Setup Dialog Ex.

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •  





Click Here to Expand Forum to Full Width

Featured