I have a small shack about 80m from my house ... I recently ran 2 strands of CAT5 cable out there from the house (one for a PC, the other is spare). I've been wanting to play with having a microcontroller out there that I can control from inside the house; connecting it to relays to power on Christmas lights, fans, etc. As a part of my experimenting, I wanted a microcontroller that could
1: Be downloaded via serial connection
2: Didn't require a PC to be in the shack with it
3: Didn't require any special signals to reset / download (RTS / DTR, etc.)
PICAXE fit the bill!
I picked up some cheap TTL >< 422 converters ... couple of bucks on amazon or ebay. Now, using just 4 wires in my spare CAT5 cable, I'm able to communicate with my PICAXE over 80m away! I'm also able to successfully download new code to the PICAXE.
This is my first go at running a long serial connection, and 422 is doing the job nicely!
1: Be downloaded via serial connection
2: Didn't require a PC to be in the shack with it
3: Didn't require any special signals to reset / download (RTS / DTR, etc.)
PICAXE fit the bill!
I picked up some cheap TTL >< 422 converters ... couple of bucks on amazon or ebay. Now, using just 4 wires in my spare CAT5 cable, I'm able to communicate with my PICAXE over 80m away! I'm also able to successfully download new code to the PICAXE.
This is my first go at running a long serial connection, and 422 is doing the job nicely!