Peripherals and other hardware

[ntromans]

I thought it might be useful to have a thead describing working hardware, but not the core things like graphics cards or network adapters but the 'add ons' that widen the usefulness of the system.

I'll kick off with one of the more expensive bits, a printer. I'd guess quite a few people here have spotted that cloud printing is the solution to lack of printer drivers, but not all systems are that good. My Old Canon printer could print an e-mail attachment, but you couldn't control any of the print settings via the e-mail and after about five years Canon rther annoyingly withdrew the service...

To replace it I recently bought a Brother MFC-J5340 .which has the print to e-mail feature but, much better than the Canon, a print via web-page, which works absolutely fine in OWB. You can select PDF or any MS Office format, plus a range of bitmap formats, and set how it will print (quality, number of copies, single or double sided etc.) and after uploading in a minute or two it's ready to print out. In principle you should also be able to access the printer's configuration page from OWB, but it gets stuck by lacking an SSL certificate, which is odd as OWB is set to ignore SSL errors. In any case, that's something you probably only need to do very occasionally.

As a side note, you can network the printer via cable or Wi-Fi, and you can scan to FTP, lthough I haven't tried this yet with AROS. Also, if Brother ever withdraws the cloud services as Canon did, the backup plan could be to set up a Linux print server as Brother have full support fr Linux drivers.

There are quite  few Brother printers that do this, but not all; however, Brother have all of their printer manuals very easily accessible online so you can look at all the full specs before parting with cash.

Cheers,
Nigel.

[Amiwell]

Thanks for the info

[Amiwell]

Nvidia Quadro NVS 295 works very well and costs nothing

[Amiwell]

I did not understand how your documents are printed

[ntromans]

I did not understand how your documents are printed

Once the printer is set up (i.e. connected to your home network via ethernet or Wi-Fi) and the cloud printing app is downloaded to it, it's quite straightforward:

• On OWB you open up the Brother cloud printing webpage. For first time use you need to type in the printer's unique ID number; this is then added to the page's URL so if you bookmark that you don't need to type in the printer's ID again.
• You then have a button to upload the file you wish to print (PEG, PDF, GIF, PNG, BMP, TIFF, DOC, XLS, PPT or TXT). Just select the file in the pop-requester.
• The second page lets you input the print settings (number of pages, quality, page size etc.) and once you click on 'Send' these are all uploaded. You then get a PIN code back for the print job.
• On the printer, select could print, type in the PIN and out comes the document.

Cheers,
Nigel.

[Amiwell]

ok i understand Nigel

[ntromans]

This one is about datalogging and control with AROS. I think I probably wrote about using ethernet to GPIO and ethernet to serial on the old AROS-Exec. The ones I have are easy to use - through the networking library in Hollywood you send text commands out and read those sent back by the devices. Some problems though: these devices come and go; (you can't get now the ones I have), the documentation is rather sparse and the description of their use often is just "Using the included [Windows] software..." Very uncertain if they can be used or not with AROS. Is there less uncertain solution? There is...

Last year at college I had to teach a course on microcontrollers and PLCs, and in doing so made a lot of use of a device called a PICAXE. This is a Microchip PIC that has been flashed with a rudimentory operating system allowing it to be easily programmed in simpler languages than C and adding a load of functions 'out of the box' such as servo control and I2C. They are designed for educational use, so have a very shallow learning curve and a  wide library of supporting documents and examples, both for code and hardware design. In particular, there is an onine Blocky (think Scratch) programmer and simulator that works in OWB, so you can create code on AROS. Unfortunately in OWB compiling the code crashes the system, so you still need a Windows or Linux machine to compile and download to the PICAXE.

The PICAXE now needs to communicate with AROS, and to do this I tried these devices from Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B09JMKY1S5/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 . In the pack is one USB to TTL serial based on a CP210x chp, one based on a PL2303 chip and a third not upported by AROS. I bought the set as I hoped at least one of the CP210x or PL2303 would work, but was very pleasantly suprised when both did, as evidenced by me being able to send data between two AROS machines using them and Term.

So, the plan is to program a PICAXE to work as the GPIO, servo controller, LCD modue controller or whatever, and communicate the data back and forth using a serial port on the PICAXE and the abve devices on AROS. The only problem in the moment is waiting for Hollywood 9.2, as 9.0 & 9.1 inadertently had the serial library hardwired to using serial.device, but once that is sorted I think AROS + Hollywood + PICAXE will make  great sensing and control system 

Cheers,
Nigel.

[Amiwell]

I bought a used laptop compatible with Aros is an Acer Aspire 5630 only the wifi card must be changed

[Amiwell]

the mini pci wifi card compatible is ATHEROS AR5006EG/AR5007EG

[ntromans]

I bought a used laptop compatible with Aros is an Acer Aspire 5630 only the wifi card must be changed

Looks like the latest ABI0 release really suits teh Acer machines 

Cheers,
Nigel.

[Amiwell]

do not use the latest build at moment

[Amiwell]

the acer aspire 5630 have a nvidia geforce go 7300 128 mb and works fine unfortunately doom 3 do not work

[AMIGASYSTEM]

Looks like the latest ABI0 release really suits teh Acer machines 

Yes I confirm the latest ABI0 is much more stable and more hardware compatible with PCs, only problem on the NVIDIA Driver, you just have to be careful not to mix the Builds, this is because the Core in these latest updates has changed many things.

My AROS One v18 includes the latest ABI0 and it works perefectly, this is confirmed by all the users who use it.

[ntromans]

I've been meaning to try the new distribution on my desktop which has a Geforce card; looks like I need to get around to that to give some hopefully useful feedback. But a Geforce equipped laptop... I'd be really tempted if Ididn't already have have five AROS capable laptops   

Cheers,
Nigel.

[dizzy]

Hi,

Do you want to control "things" from AROS? If I understood correctly you want some input and outputs?

Few months ago I made a RGB controller for my son's computer using STM32 micro (usb to led strip and fans), here's the github https://github.com/Dzy/Corsair_LNP_stm32_maplemini

Would be nice to have some library one could directly use to communicate with "things", I don't know if other platforms have such framework figured out that we could clone.

Unfortunately I have some problems setting up AROS build system and at the moment haven't figured out how to set it up again. I have lost all my configuration setups that I had made previously.

This one is about datalogging and control with AROS. I think I probably wrote about using ethernet to GPIO and ethernet to serial on the old AROS-Exec. The ones I have are easy to use - through the networking library in Hollywood you send text commands out and read those sent back by the devices. Some problems though: these devices come and go; (you can't get now the ones I have), the documentation is rather sparse and the description of their use often is just "Using the included [Windows] software..." Very uncertain if they can be used or not with AROS. Is there less uncertain solution? There is...

Last year at college I had to teach a course on microcontrollers and PLCs, and in doing so made a lot of use of a device called a PICAXE. This is a Microchip PIC that has been flashed with a rudimentory operating system allowing it to be easily programmed in simpler languages than C and adding a load of functions 'out of the box' such as servo control and I2C. They are designed for educational use, so have a very shallow learning curve and a  wide library of supporting documents and examples, both for code and hardware design. In particular, there is an onine Blocky (think Scratch) programmer and simulator that works in OWB, so you can create code on AROS. Unfortunately in OWB compiling the code crashes the system, so you still need a Windows or Linux machine to compile and download to the PICAXE.

The PICAXE now needs to communicate with AROS, and to do this I tried these devices from Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B09JMKY1S5/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 . In the pack is one USB to TTL serial based on a CP210x chp, one based on a PL2303 chip and a third not upported by AROS. I bought the set as I hoped at least one of the CP210x or PL2303 would work, but was very pleasantly suprised when both did, as evidenced by me being able to send data between two AROS machines using them and Term.

So, the plan is to program a PICAXE to work as the GPIO, servo controller, LCD modue controller or whatever, and communicate the data back and forth using a serial port on the PICAXE and the abve devices on AROS. The only problem in the moment is waiting for Hollywood 9.2, as 9.0 & 9.1 inadertently had the serial library hardwired to using serial.device, but once that is sorted I think AROS + Hollywood + PICAXE will make  great sensing and control system 

Cheers,
Nigel.