14 Apr
2025
14 Apr
'25
6:13 p.m.
Following Chuck's comments, I would recommend throwing a job description up
to Upwork <www.upwork.com> and paying someone in Eastern Europe, South
America or Southeast Asia to implement some STM32 firmware to get this done
at low cost, maybe $500 total.
Job category: Firmware, electrical engineering, hardware, C
programming language
Job keywords: STM32, USB device
Job description: We want to build a device that directs an industrial paper
tape reader [manufacturer] [exact model number] to read paper tape, and
store data to an SD card with a FAT32 file system. The device needs 7
buttons (left, right, up, down, ok, start, stop), a common 128x64 OLED
display, and a 5v tolerant parallel control and data interface to the tape
reader. The user can adjust a filename based on the date, defaulting to
2025-01-01, and an additional sequence number starting at -001 added by the
device that increments with each tape read. When the start button is
pressed, the device controls the tape reader to advance the tape and record
the data stream to a file with the displayed name on the SD card. The
device should create 2 files with identical data in different formats: File
one has extension ".bin" and contains 8-bit binary data from the
tape, one binary character for each byte. File two file has extension
".txt" and contains 8-bit HEX data as text from the tape, two text
characters for each byte ("00"-"FF").
I've been wanting to do this for a while with my Remex tape reader, haha.
Maybe we can combine forces? I do HW/FW design for a living but need to
complete other projects first...
=]
--
Anders Nelson
On Mon, Apr 14, 2025, 11:44 AM Chuck Guzis via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
wrote:
On 4/14/25 07:47, Mike Katz via cctalk wrote:
I have a couple of Sanyo Denki units that I can
do the same for. I was
hoping for a serial/USB option that would handle fan fold in stead of
rolled paper tape.
I threw together my USB interface for the Sanyo Denki in an afternoon,
using the lowest of the STM32F103 MCU "Blue pills" - the C6. Useless
for many blue pill projects, but adequate to hold USB comm support and
the simple logic to control the paper tape reader.
Why the STM32F103? I had a bunch of the things wasting space and they
feature 5V tolerant I/O and a sufficient number of GPIOs to interface to
the parallel reader output. There was plenty of flash program memory
left unused so that other features could be added if desired.
I suspect almost all CNC-oriented tape readers have a similar interface
to that of the Sanyo.
Really, if you're talking about it and not doing it, you're squandering
time that you could spend implementing it.
--Chuck