QUOTE (raymyster @ Apr 6 2009, 01:07 PM)
What switches depends on the range (laser are generally longer ranges than.....say...photo and inductive - not that inductive would be any good for detecting your hands...so how far away are you from the interface?) and probably more importantly on your budget.
Other factors will affect your choice (do you have to see the spots...if not then maybe IR?) do you want to build something cheap (laser pointer and photo-detector < £5) or buy something to industrial standards (Pepperl + Fuchs £50-£100 each). Only you can choose the sensor as only you know your project.
Go down to Maplins and see what they have or if you have an account....RS Components have loads under "Sensors and Transducers" e.g
http://uk.rs-online.com/web/search/searchB...t&R=5103249
Getting it to the parallel port is with wire! Lots of info out there on using the parallel port as digital IO
http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~ih/doc/par/
and I guess you haven't looked at the example yet to see just how easy it is to get the data in (watch the voltages though.....parallel port is 5v and many off the shelf industrial sensors are 12-24v!). You could go for a digital IO card but why not use the one that comes with every PC as you only need 2. With a bit of thought and preparation, you should have this up and running in 1/2hr after ordering/receiving the bits!
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QUOTE (mross @ Apr 6 2009, 02:51 PM)
Yes, LabVIEW can do what you want. LabVIEW will do it much more easily than C++. But interfacing... I have not done that. I stick to LabVIEW.
I do not see the point of lasers. You can use mechanical switches that cost a few pesos just as well.
Thats not the brief.
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we need to create 2 sensors with beams that will be projected to my hand, when i swing my hand left: a labview vi will detect that & send a left click instance to the c++ engine. & same thing vise versa when i swing right.
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With a proper data acquisition and control system, you can sense and respond to continuously changing inputs which will be better for aircraft control. A binary system - hand blocking laser versus hand not blocking laser - is an ineffective way to control all but the simplest systems. How will you tell it to turn slowly or quickly?
Indeed but that is not the requirement. I imagine this is a learning exercise rather than a commercial product to fly airplanes.
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Your parallel port is not easily useful. It is a digital system. You can use use this for sending simple digital IO, but this is a misuse - alot of trouble with little payback. If you have a microcontroller that can send parallel information (bits, bytes, and words) then it is used properly. Only in this way can you get continuous control of the aircraft.
I Disagree. Little trouble and cheap. Bits, bytes and words are just highs and lows on a digital IO interpreted in a certain manner.
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LabVIEW is a full featured software development environtment. The learning curve is steep, but significant. It does not seem practical to me that you should be using LabVIEW for this small project. You should be learning your C++ to do this.
Apart from the fact that that Labview is more intuitive, has lots of examples you can modify for just this sort of thing and (more importantly) they have already done it in C++ but using a keyboard.
I think the most interesting conundrums will be when they want to interface the Labview to the rest of the existing system. There is no sane reason to use Labview for this trivial part of the project (and mixing languages is always more trouble than it's worth) when all they have to do is read the parallel port/digital IO or whatever interface they choose, directly from thier C++ program which is why I am lead to beleive this is a learning exercise.
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