Parallel Port Data Acquisition

A project on the development of a PC/Microcontroller based drilling machine originally began as a capstone engineering project in 2001 at the Department of Engineering, USP. An interfacing board which communicates data over a PC's parallel port was not fully functional at the completion of the project in 2001. Hence, additional work was carried out focusing on troubleshooting and improving the existing interfacing board design so that data can be accurately communicated between the PC or microcontroller and the various hardware associated with the drilling machine.

An interfacing board prototype has been produced that communicates data accurately between the PC and the various drilling machine hardware (Figure 1). To validate this testing has been carried out using switches, LED’s and laboratory power supplies in the first instance and then via connections to the PC’s parallel port and running test programs from the PC to read and write data from the interfacing board (Figure 2). Final testing has been carried out by integrating the interfacing board with the rest of the drilling machine components.

The interfacing board PCB design was mass fabricated for use in other projects after the completion of the project. Details are published in the peer-reviewed research output below.

For more details on this project refer to the following:

1. Chand, P. PC based drilling machine: Data acquisition and control board, 2013 (LAP LAMBERT Academic Publishing, Germany).