C# controlled lights via USB port
At work, we thought it would be cool if we could turn on some siren lights when a server goes down.
Step #1 to make this happen was to be able to control simple electronics from custom code. I love C# and the USB port is what is common now so I researched and found the FT245RL “USB to FIFO” chip. This chip made it really easy for me. It plays well with drivers known by Windows.
When I plugged in the chip to the USB port, Windows 7 immediately recognized it and installed the drivers for it. You can use a couple of drivers the default is the simpler one to use where it turns the USB port into a virtual serial (COM) port.
Writing to serial ports is really standard so this is the code that outputs a byte through the chip:
private static void WriteByte(byte byteToWrite)
{
using (SerialPort vcp = new SerialPort())
{
vcp.BaudRate = 9600;
vcp.DataBits = 8;
vcp.StopBits = StopBits.One;
vcp.Parity = Parity.None;
vcp.PortName = "COM5";
vcp.Open();
vcp.Write(new byte[] { byteToWrite }, 0, 1);
vcp.Close();
}
}
