K8055 USB Interface Driver for Girder?

[NeoMorph]

Has anyone developed a driver for girder for the Velleman K8055 USB Input/Output board?

The info on this board is found here -> http://www.velleman.be/ot/en/product/view/?id=351346
For those interesting in the board in the UK you can buy them from Maplin (http://www.maplin.co.uk/Search.aspx?criteria=k8055&source=15&SD=Y)

Currently I use a VB program I wrote to control my boards. I then use Girder to activate the buttons in the VB program. While this works it's a bit of a bodge job. I wondered if it was possible to control this board directly.

Currently I have one K8055 controlling my living room lighting and power switch for my xbox. I modded my xbox with a 3.5mm jack on the back linked to the power switch so I can turn it on with my remote control. The xbox version one didn't have remote control power so this works a treat. I have a macro on my IR remote control that turns on the tv, amp and and xbox plus turns off the main lights and turns on the tv background lighting. I just wish that mediabridge supported XBMC (xbox media center).

The K8055 manages to turn on the xbox and set the scene lighting. Without this interface board I would have to use something like X10 and even then it wouldn't allow me to turn on my xbox. With this inexpensive board and a few relays it works great. Downside is you do have to run wires to each light or device but if you are like me and decorating it's easy enough to lay the wire and hide it with little difficulty.

Now if I had a driver for the K8055 I could control it directly.

[tmorten]

I'm not familiar with those boards, but there are a number of IR mods for the XBox that will let you turn it on and off using infrared. One of them is described here: http://www.xbox-scene.com/articles/xir.php. I'd recommend using that plus x10 or Insteon (so you can leverage existing plug-ins), but I'm sure you could write a new plug-in for the Vellemen boards as well...

Best,
Tim

[NeoMorph]

I don't think you got what I meant Tim... I have the board working fine atm but it is using a Visual Basic program as a go-between which lacks ellegance. The xbox mod was done like a year ago and is controlled via girder to my VB program which controlls the vellemen board which sends the signal to the xbox (sounds awkward but it works great). The xbox has been heavily modded - it's a crystal xbox with the green and red leds removed and blue leds put into their place and the whole box glows a lovely blue that matches my plasma screen background blue lighting... the hard drive was changed from a 10gb to a 300gb and softmodded to allow me to store all my games on it plus I added XBMC for watching tv episodes and listening to music (both streamed over my home network from my main server). I was just wondering if there was a driver available for girder to access the velleman board directly.

Most likely I will have to figure out how to write a driver for the thing. Nice thing about the velleman board is that you can have up to 4 boards connected to a PC (I currently have 2) so that means they can control up to 32 relays and have 20 digital inputs plus 8 analogue inputs.

If push comes to shove I think that I'll have to figure out how to make the VB program pass variables back and forward from girder. I need to figure out how to send information to from the digital inputs on the vellemen board to Girder so it can pass the info on to NR. For example I have a pressure sensitive switch under the carpet that I want to status check so that it can trigger a wake up call to the panel. If it's the first incident of the day I want it to show up my daily To-Do list.