How to Connect and Control External Devices with your PC

How to Connect External Devices to the PC
"Thinking Outside the Box"

The PC Compatible computer is the corner stone of modern desktop computing but so much of it’s potential is often overlooked. It’s too easy to focus on games, surfing the net and word processing and forget about the power of the computer to operate, control and automate a very wide range of externally connected devices.
These devices can be something as simple as a domestic light bulb or as complex as a multi-axis industrial robot. How many of us have looked at our PC and thought of the possibilities of some of the following …

	Controlling our home lighting; maybe with a view to economising on power or the convenience of more sophisticated on/off timing
	Turning a boring model train set, or remote controlled car into something programmable with it’s own intelligence
	Automating tasks that have become repetitive and mundane such as watering plants or opening and closing windows in our greenhouse depending on the temperature

The first step in all of the above is to have the knowledge of how to connect the required external devices to the PC. Our mission is to inform and educate and provide pointers to help in this area. We will look at each the most common means of connecting to a standard PC and show just how simple it can be with the right techniques. We will be compiling the information necessary to carry out this task and make it readily available on this website. This will include …

	Pin-outs of connectors, electrical characteristics of ports and how to interpret them
	Programs (from the simple to the complex) to access these ports and connected devices
	Characteristics of typical external devices such as motors, lamps, relays, sensors

We do not make any charge for this information but we would be grateful if you would let us know what you have built so that we can present it here on the website to encourage others to follow your lead. We are still in our early stages, but, hopefully, in the fullness of time, we can provide a resource to help more and more users get more and more from their PC’s.

Tip: It is a growing trend these days, with the constant advancement of the specifications of the average domestic PC, that the “old PC” with the more modest spec is consigned to a corner of a room or a cupboard labelled as next to useless for all but surfing the web. Why not put them to better use by dedicating them to an automation and control task. Real world control and automation usually requires a small fraction of the available processing power of the average desktop PC.