Thanks for the replies! It amazes me whats out there! I'm excited about this project! To answer Bryon's questions > 1) Do all of the PICs have to be able to communicate at the same time? Not necissarily but i'd like to send data each second from each pic about it's status. > 2) Is the communcations required going to have to be bidirectional? Yes. I'd like to be able to communicate to the PICmicro. It seems from a consensus so far most engineers recommend the multidrop! Which sounds like fun! The multidrop is a totally new concept to me. Where would you recommend i start? Are there any recommended books which i could buy and then make a small network with a multidrop? Or perhaps a project website? Upon connecting them to the PC, i'd like to somehow give them ip addresses (fun factor). I was thinknig about using iptables. Will using a multidrop be hinderous to this goal? Would anyone know a ball point mark how much the XPort embedded Device servers cost? I'm still awaiting their reply :( http://www.lantronix.com/products/eds/xport/ It would seem they would solve my problem, but im thinking they cost $50 each. I'm trying to keep costs fairly low. Thanks guys, i'm amazed with all this! ----- Original Message ----- From: "Byron A Jeff" To: Sent: Wednesday, June 23, 2004 6:22 AM Subject: Re: serial port dilemma - design advise requested > On Wed, Jun 23, 2004 at 01:44:11AM +1000, Trungie*! wrote: > > I have a PIC device that connects to my PC via serial port for constant > > communication. > > OK. > > > > > I would like to have over 10 PIC devices connected to my PC somehow for > > communication. > > Well that's a challenge. A couple of questions: > > 1) Do all of the PICs have to be able to communicate at the same time? > 2) Is the communcations required going to have to be bidirectional? > > > However, i would not like to buy some sort of expensive multi serial port > > card for it. > > That could be painful. > > > > > What sorts of things can i do to over come this problem? Potentially i would > > like to use over 10 of these PIC devices at once. > > Well it gets back to the questions above. If each and every PIC needs to be > able to independently communicate at the same time, then you're pretty much > stuck with having a serial port per PIC and the multi-serial solution. > > However if you can arrange so that the PC can pick which PIC to talk to, then > you can arrange what is known as a multidrop network where all of the PICs > share the same serial connection. > > The most popular hardware interface for multidrop serial is EIA485 (also known > as RS485). It's cheap and reliable. However there's no specified protocol that > sits on top of it to talk to each of the individual PIC nodes. So you'll have > to fish around for ways of doing it. > > Hope this gets you started on the subject. > > BAJ > > -- > http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different > ways. See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details. > -- http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different ways. See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details.