Reading from a USB port?

[limlik]

I started wandering about my usb ports for use with robotics. My question is, does anybody know how to read what is being sent to the usb ports? For example if I had a button connected to the positive and the input how could I go about getting a C++ program to register that it got a 1 or a 0?

 

[blueroomelectronics]

It's a type of high speed serial port, you need an USB slave device like the FT245R (USB to Parallel) IC to talk to it. You cannot connect buttons directly to the data lines.

 

[limlik]

Didn't exactly mean directly but that was a rough idea of what I wanted. Was going to use some Basic stamp 2's to do some stuff with it. But I guess those wouldn't work without the FT245R chips or am I wrong?

 

[Mike_2545]

This may be what you need, I have not worked with it myself.

 

[limlik]

I do have one of those.

 

[Mike_2545]

Does it do what you want?

 

[limlik]

So I guess just have the Basic Stamp output the data it receives and just have the c++ (Might just use visual basic at first) interpret the data.

 

[Mike_2545]

There is a lot more room to interpret data in VB than a Stamp.

 

[limlik]

Ya but I have to have something on the end of the serial cord to read my sensors.

 

[Mike_2545]

I agree, but if you know the nature of the data you send to a VB program you do not have to interpret it in the Stamp, let the VB take care of that end and just send raw data.

 

[aljamri]

It's a type of high speed serial port, you need an USB slave device like the FT245R (USB to Parallel) IC to talk to it.

in this case the I/O's are limited with parallel port limits ??