USB IO module

Anyone ever find out a source for the USB IO module that Tormach uses? So far I've only found one that's similar and it might be possible to make it work, but it's a definite might.

Looking at how PP communicates with the board there are Tormach specific strings in it.

I would tend to believe that the board is either custom tormach or a commercial board that has been customized by Tormach.

it send the command VE and gets back two values, r and data, data contains the "Tormach I/O"

this is contained in the usbio.py file

A bit of recoding in the usbio.py probably could make this work with other boards.

the other thing you can do is you can map in the hal file I/O directly. i did this for 4 outputs as a test

At one time (last year) the IO module was a CP2102 with 4 relays attached.

It's a CP2102, a microcontroller, and four relays (output) plus four optocouplers (inputs) plus an ID selector.

If you're comfortable rolling your own, I reverse-engineered the protocol, and wrote firmware for the Teensy 3.2/3.5 microcontroller (Arduino-like but harder/better/faster/stronger) that emulates the USB I/O: github.com/jwatte/teensy_tormach_usbio

It can also be used on an Arduino Leonardo with minor changes, I've heard, but it doesn't work well on a "plain" Arduino because the serial bootloader gets in the way of properly detecting the board.

thank you for this. I figured that someone probably had done this before. I was going to eventually look into this myself, but this works too.

I seen this on youtube..




Found the board in the video on amazon..

www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07DGPT293

I saw that also and I have 3 of those boards, they are decent boards.
my concern with this is he's looking to sell these. my hope is he's designing his own board and not using this on. basically, relying on someone else who could stop production at anytime is usually not a good thing.

I wish him luck and it appears to work well.

I've played with the teensy code and find it ok but has some quirks and of course you have to add your own relays and input protection to teensy.

Seen a post on the zone looks like he shelved the project due to MCU change on the board.

Yeh, that's why you don't based offerings on other hardware, you have no control.
and one of these type of boards is not that hard to design.

There has been a little progress on this board, new version with Pro Mini and this: www.dhgate.com/product/dc-5v-12v-24v-4-c...board/392767641.html daughter board.

There is a free version that supports one I/O.
jsea.tech.blog/arduino-uno-pathpilot-usb-i-o/

Github:
github.com/jwatte/teensy_tormach_usbio

Hope this helps.