hello everyone,
bacially what i am trying to build, is a device that can read signals from a computer based thing and transmit it to my computer. at the moment there are three signals i want to read: clock, and two data transmit lines. i want to be able to read the state of both the data lines every time the clock is pulled high and pass that to the computer.
now i have found some things that will do it, called data analysers, but they are expensive and overkill for what i am doing.
i also found a guide on the internet of how to turn your parallel port into an analyser, but it is not fast enough. the clock speed of my signal is roughly 5 mhz, and the operating system on the computer wont allow so much processing time to be devoted to polling the parallel port, and either way i want to avoid using parallel and have some kind of USB thing.
i think this should be easy because there are so many things that do what i am trying to do, for example even a keyboard and mouse have a clock signal and transmit data, everything you plug into a computer is doing what i am trying to do, so there should be something that already does what i am after but i have no idea what you would call it.
so my first question is, does anyone know what this kind of thing is called, or if i can get a cheap, premade usb interface thing anywhere?
and if not, is there any other way i could be doing this? is it possible to interface maybe with serial or usb at a speed of 5mhz?
and finally, and probably more relivent to you guys is, is something like this possible to build by someone who is not the best with electronics and doesn't have access to surface mount PCB printers or any of that stuff?
thanks very much!
bacially what i am trying to build, is a device that can read signals from a computer based thing and transmit it to my computer. at the moment there are three signals i want to read: clock, and two data transmit lines. i want to be able to read the state of both the data lines every time the clock is pulled high and pass that to the computer.
now i have found some things that will do it, called data analysers, but they are expensive and overkill for what i am doing.
i also found a guide on the internet of how to turn your parallel port into an analyser, but it is not fast enough. the clock speed of my signal is roughly 5 mhz, and the operating system on the computer wont allow so much processing time to be devoted to polling the parallel port, and either way i want to avoid using parallel and have some kind of USB thing.
i think this should be easy because there are so many things that do what i am trying to do, for example even a keyboard and mouse have a clock signal and transmit data, everything you plug into a computer is doing what i am trying to do, so there should be something that already does what i am after but i have no idea what you would call it.
so my first question is, does anyone know what this kind of thing is called, or if i can get a cheap, premade usb interface thing anywhere?
and if not, is there any other way i could be doing this? is it possible to interface maybe with serial or usb at a speed of 5mhz?
and finally, and probably more relivent to you guys is, is something like this possible to build by someone who is not the best with electronics and doesn't have access to surface mount PCB printers or any of that stuff?
thanks very much!