The distribution across my web pages of my material about the MicroLan (aka "1-Wire") has become somewhat confused... sorry!
If you dig successfully, you'll find information to help you use the product. There is information is about how to write Delphi programs for that hardware. Source code is provided. There are general overview articles, and articles with specifics of how to access particular functions of individual chips.
There is also information about using the MicroLan for sense and contol work, in particular information about sensing and recording the weather using various with MircoLan based devices products.
MicroLan and 1-Wire are registered trademarks of Dallas Semiconductor, aka Dalsemi, now part of Dallas/Maxim. I have no connection with them apart from being a happy user of their products. My use of the chips is primarily in weather logging applications, though they can be used for many things; a hamster's night-time wheel use was monitored with MicroLan chips, for instance.
There are more notes at the bottom of the page about other offerings, my editorial philosophy, how to email me, and a search engine to help you find things.
Here begins what Mr Reagan called "The Beef":
While all of the code "works", some examples are better than others, hence the "star ratings". Unless you need to use a particular chip, start with the examples with more stars.
Introduction to Dallas MicroLan... Source code for accessing the Dallas MicroLan, aka 1-Wire system, as used in iButtons Dallas is now part of Maxim. Has specifics relating to DS2405 and DS1820 or DS1920. (The DS1920 is just an 1820 in an enclosure.) While this only deserves one star as far as the sophistication of the code is concerned, it has important general introductory material... you should probably give it a look.
Dallas MicroLan ADC, DS2450, 2 star... Source code of almost working software to read 4 channel analog to digital converter. If you know the Dallas chips well, I'd be very grateful if you could look at this, even if you're not a Delphi programmer, to see if you can spot my mistake! Channels A, C and D read properly, but not channel B! Yes... I've checked the signal being sent to channel B.
Dallas MicroLan Wonder Chip: DS2438, 4 star... Information and source code. Dallas designed this chip to monitor rechargeable batteries, but you and I can use it for its ADC (one channel, wide range) and high resolution temperature sensing. This program is the best MicroLan access demo I've written as of 8/30. While earlier programs work most of the time, they may include errors that I was wise enough NOT to make when I wrote this code. This program uses an approach different from that in the two-star programs on offer. The two-star programs conform more closely to the Dallas demos, but I think my approach to robustness is better... and your code does need to be robust! The MicroLan is, in general, great, but instead of designing something that never fails, the Dallas team gave us a product that fails from time to time... but does so gracefully. I have a weather monitoring application running. At the moment, there have been 12,000 cycles since the last system boot. The MicroLan has "failed" to reply correctly three times. Not a bad percentage of right answers, but you do need to write your software to handle the occasional bad read.
Dallas MicroLan PIO Chip: DS2408, 4 star... Information, help file and source code. The 2408 is an 8 bit addressable switch according to Dallas. I think of it as a parallel port chip: There are 8 pins on it, and each can be an input from or output to devices in the "outside world". This software derives from the program for the DS2438, see the comments about that in the previous paragraph.
AAG Digital I/O using PIO Chip: TAI 8558, DS2408, 4 star...
AAG is a supplier of 1-Wire related hardware with quite a reputation for good customer support. They did a nice 4 bits in, 4 bits out digital i/o card based on the DS2408. The inputs are opto-isolator protected (AC or DC input accepted), and the outputs are via relays (Common, NormallyOpen and NormallyClosed contacts available via screw terminal.) The link at the start of this paragraph will connect you to a .pdf document discussing using a TAI8558 for a burglar alarm and heating control. The application is merely an illustration to show you about the device. You can download the relevant Delphi sourcecode by clicking here, and the exe file is available here. The latter two files are self extracting archives which will merely install some files, not interfere with your registry, etc.
Here ends da beef:
Editorial Philosophy
I dislike 'fancy' websites with more concern for a flashy
appearance than for good content. For a pretty picture, I can go to
an art gallery. Of course, an attractive site WITH content deserves
praise... as long as that pretty face doesn't cost download time. In
any case....
<PS.... I wrote the following before getting into the nitty
gritty of what I intended. Implementation has proved to be a pain,
and I'm experimenting with different solutions. You'll find some
tutorials are heavily infested with HTML code. Is this a problem? You
can still save the pages from a browser, and re-load them from your
hard-disc later, off-line. OpenOffice takes HTML in its stride. With
WordPerfect, you can load the .htm file, select all, copy to clipboard, start a new WordPerfect document, then paste in the text, mostly intact and cleaned of HTML. (Hard to describe, easy to do.)>
You should be able to read the tutorials on-line without
difficulty. However, you should ALSO find it easy to capture them for
off line use, including editing for your own purposes. The following
should work. I would suggest that you create a folder for the
tutorials so that you can retain my filenames with no risk of
clashes:
On-line, use your browser to view the tutorial you want to
capture.
Use File|Save As... to save the web-page to your disc. At this
point you can log off, or visit other pages, perhaps saving them,
too.
When you have logged off, start Notepad (or Wordpad, or anything
you like, but then you're on your own <g>). Load the file you
saved. Turn word-wrap on. (Notepad: Edit|Word-wrap.)
Snip off the html header and footer. <In one 'solution', you
will also have to remove all <BR>. and
<BR>s from the text (Wordpad can to this.) Sorry...
working on it!>
Re-save... you should now have the tutorial in a nice, tidy,
uncomplicated text file.
________
Filenames: I've tried to be organized: Names start PT or DT for
Pascal/ Delphi Tutorial. Next is a digit, for the level, then I've
used letters one after the other, e.g. DT1a, DT1b, DT1c. The letter
doesn't mean much... it just shows when I got around to that
particular topic! With the MicroLan stuff, that is getting a little confused. Files about MicroLan created after 8/03 may be prefixed DST, but that is not all of the MicroLan stuff.
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