Using PC to control Opto-Isolators

[Designer]

Hey there,

I'm stuck on a little project, im looking for a way of controlling 512 Opto-isolators from my PC (1024 would be better if possible) under Visual Basic.

I'm wondering what the best way to accomplish this would be as im working on a very tight budget. I would prefer to take the route of having control from the USB port or 9 pin serial in a way i can use the MSCOMM32 OCX as my PC seems very unstable using parallel port control (used a Velleman K8000 for a while and worked very erratically).

I can see a few ways of doing it with just a PIC but cant figure on a way of using serial comms with multiple pic's unless i could switch the serial connection between the multiple pics at high speed.

Any ideas?

 

[jbeng]

You don't say if the output from the optos needs to be steady or if it can be pulsed. If the latter is ok, then you could use a pic to receive the serial data from the pc and convert it to a suitable data stream to send to LED matrix drivers, such as Maxim's MAX6960, 61, 62 or 63. Each of these chips will drive 64 leds at a time (in an 8x8 matrix), but they will be multiplexed. These chips cost about $6 US. You could use any of several other Maxim chips to do the same thing, but their outputs will also be multiplexed. Look for those chips with 8 digits and 7 segments+DP.
**broken link removed**
JB