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Sensing and Control for hobbyists and schools: Phidgets

www.phidgets.com has a range of modules which connect to a host PC via USB. You need Windows 2000 or XP, or later. The Linux community is also supported. At the heart of using Phidgets with Windows, you need to be able to call a COM or .NET library, supplied by the nice people at Phidgets. They work hard to support a variety of programming environments, but, obviously, the support for some languages is more active than that for others.

This page had a hasty review at 5/10. Some of what follows may be dated, much of it harks back to 9/05... but that kind of gives you a warm fuzzy feeling about the company and product line, doesn't it? It isn't a six week wonder.

The simplest Phidgets, which is a name for the devices, as well as for the company, implement analog inputs, digital inputs, and digital outputs. To illustrate some shorthand, lets suppose there was a device with 2 analog inputs, 3 digital outputs and 4 digital inputs. That would be called a 2/3/4 interface.

They actually offer the following:
0/16/16 interface: $79 (Prices throughout as at 9/05)
8/ 8/ 8 interface: $79
0/ 0/ 4 interface: $47

Phidgets offer single channel and quad servo motor controllers, $25 and $60 respectively. They also have an extensive line of "bits and pieces" for robotic device makers, including pan & tilt kits and various sensors designed to work well with the input/ output boards mentioned above.

Phidgets have a neat RFID experimenter's kit. It can read only one tag at a time, and only if it is brought close to the reader, but it would be good for many things! (They sell a wide variety of tags, most at about $1.50 in small quantities.)

They also offer:

Shaft encoder: $32
Two axis accelerometer: $60
K-type thermocouple interface: $70 (Thermocouple: $22)
Weight scale: 0-140kg. $100

And finally, they also have, still via a USB interface, LCD and LED-array display modules.


I haven't (at 9/05) tried any Phidgets myself, but a quick groups.google.com check shows that the product line is several years old, with no obvious passionate critics.

At 5/10, I purchased one of their RFID readers. It appears well built, with a sensible feature set. The simple "check it" app works well. I haven't yet... with only a little while trying... "cracked" writing my own programs for it. It seems that the libraries provided by Phidgets will do most of the heavy lifting... I just have to get my compiler to "play nice" with the library. Can't spend time on that just now. Looks "do-able".

Back in 2005, there was a neat "Projects Examples | Customer Projects" page. One person had a webcam and a servo, and you could feed his dog treats, and see him (the dog) wag his tail! (Various issues of the dog's welfare were considered and handled well.) There was also a superb Boeing 737 simulator... built within the nose of a real 737 on someone's driveway. This man has a very Right Thinking wife! That was at http://www.737nut.com/aircrafthome, but isn't there today (5/10).


To use the modules, you will need a Windows 2000 or XP machine or Linux.

(Remember the note above saying this page is mostly from 2005). In the Windows environment, you install a library with an .msi file. That's supposed to stand for "MicroSoft Installer". Forgive a little cynicism/ experience, and please don't take this as a criticism of Phidgets... msi's are all the rage, "everybody's doing it", but... I translate "msi" two ways:

"MicroSoft for Idiots".... "They" know what they're doing, and you needn't worry your little head; they've "kindly" worked oh so hard to make your life easy. (As long as everything goes according to their plans, and as long as they've understood your system and needs.)...or

"MicroSoft Inscrutable".... Click "Next" and pray. Something will happen, but you'll never know what it was. I hope your system works afterwards.

It seems from one thing I read that all you actually NEED, if programming with Delphi, is your Delphi exe and a DLL which is installed as part of the .msi's activities. (2010: I think things require more complex arrangements today... dll must be registered with local installation of OS, at least?)

Once the library is installed, you are mostly done. It makes writing programs to interact with the Phidgets relatively painless. There are guides for Visual Basic, C, C++, Delphi, Labview and Java programmers, and quite a few sample projects, though, apart from customer's samples, everything seems to be available only in one or another variant of Visual Basic.


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This is just one of the guides I have published on the net. Please visit any of the following that relate to interests you have....

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