Sun Tracking / Heliostat Program

[Gabriel]

Any issues with the Sun Tracking / Heliostat Program  can be reported here. Also, if you have any ideas or suggestions for improvements, I would be interested in hearing them.

Thanks!
Gabriel

[sunspot]

I recently upgraded to Windows Vista and when trying to install Sun Tracker 0.9.1 I get an error message.  I attached a screen capture of the error message I'm getting.  I don't know much about Vista so I'm not sure what the problem is.  Any help would be appreciated.  Thanks!

[Gabriel]

I think what you need to do is install the latest version of .NET from Microsoft.

Here is the download link. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=333325FD-AE52-4E35-B531-508D977D32A6&displaylang=en

That should hopefully fix it. If not, let me know, and I'll see what I can do.

Thanks for the feedback!
Gabriel

[sunspot]

Thanks Gabriel, that did the trick, I got the program to install with no problems and the program runs.  Now I'm testing the parallel port with an LED as described but I'm not having any luck.  My parallel port is one that's on the motherboard, not a card.  I've changed the port settings in device manager to all the different options but nothing is working when using Sun Tracker.  I also tried the limit switch test and it didn't work either.

I did some searching online and found a program called Lalim Parallel Port Control Pro 3.6.0.  When I run this program with the LED connnected to pin 2 and 25 it does not blink.  However if I move the resistor lead from pin 25 to either pin 20 or 22 it will blink using the Lalim program.  The LED will also blink when I touch the resistor lead to the metal casing that is part of the DB25 connector housing.

I'm new to all this parallel port stuff but I do know my way around the inside of the computer having built a good number of them.  I appreciate any advice or suggestions.

Thanks,
Chuck

[Jon]

I also did a bit of parallel port stuff once to use the signals.  Sometimes things didnt work unless I sent a carriage return or newline command (I think it was code 10 and 13) to flush any stored data in the (computers printer) buffer (data storage area) that wasnt sent out of the port.  [update. I posted a bunch more about this in some following replies, first check if your device is working ok before using these codes mentioned or just send once before starting the main program.  In partiular, I had to do this when sending commands to my (at the time) Epson LQ-510 dot matrix 24 pin head printer... I could select many useful printer options and combinations but only if I could send the codes to the printer myself...the codes were in the printers manual and these functions were nowhere in site as control buttons for the average user to have....I still miss that printer though due to all that it could do, but like most printers then, it used a ribbon].

[update , October 7, 2009,  I moved some of my post below that were of a basic nature for stepper motors and circuits to the General Topics area].

[Gabriel]

Let's see....

Well pins 18-25 are all ground pins, so I don't understand why connecting the led through pin 25 to pins 20-22 would do anything at all.

Is there a chance that your parallel port has a male connection on it instead of a female connection(like what I have in the pictures). For the male connection, things get flipped around, so you might not be connecting the right pins.

I have a few other ideas, but I have something I need to do, so I will try and post more this afternoon when I get back if this doesn't help.

Just a couple of quick questions though.
Are you using a 64bit OS?
When you go into device manager and you see this window, do you have any settings at all which have a 378 in them. Or do you only choices with 278 in them.



Oh, and thanks for your input Jon.

Gotta run now, Thanks!
Gabriel

[sunspot]

Jon,
Thanks for the advice but I have no programming skills so I don't know how to go about issueing commands to the printer port.


Gabriel,
I greatly appreciate the help and really enjoy the website.

Let me clarify on what I was doing.  I had one lead of the LED connected to Pin 2 all the time and I was moving the other end, the free end of the resistor lead, from pin 25 to the other ground pins.  The LED will blink, when using the Lalim Parallel Port Control program, when the LED is connected to Pin 2 and 20, or Pin 2 and 22.

The parallel port on my pc is just like what you show in the picture, a female connection.

The version of Vista I installed is not 64 bit.

When looking at the settings in device manager the orginal settings for the port were 378.

Fortunately I work in an engineering department with lots of electrical engineers and people lots smarter than me, when it comes to this type of stuff.  I've been picking their brains too.

Thanks again for everyones help, I'm sure we'll get it figured out.
Chuck

[sunspot]

Thanks for the great info and video Jon, it's going to definitely help me.   This weekend I'm going to build a box like the one in the video to help me figure this stuff out.  Thanks again for the help, it's much appreciated.

Chuck

[Gabriel]

To Jon,

Wow Jon, Thanks! You have actually answered a few questions of my own which I hadn't asked yet. Once of which was about using cheap speaker wire across long distances. Just so I am certain, you are saying that it is OK to extend the length of a parallel port cable using cheap speaker wire. I don't know a whole lot about electronics myself, and I don't want to ruin anything.

I might have to pick your brain more later once Chuck's problem is worked out. Thanks!



To Chuck,
I've been searching the net to try and see if I can figure out why your parallel port isn't working with the Sun Tracker program. My best guess is that Inpout32.dll might not like Vista. Other people have gotten it to work on Vista, but I think that it might have required some extra effort on their part. Here is a link to the forums for this particular .dll. http://forums.highrez.co.uk/viewforum.php?f=7

I see some stuff for Vista there, but nothing really caught my eye for being a possible cause for the problem. You might be able to find something though.

By the way, inpout32.dll is what the Sun Tracker program uses to access the computer's parallel port, but it's getting a little out of date. In fact, I read in its documentation that there are better options out there now, so I'm going to look into them.

I've gotten inpout32.dll to work on 3 different computers myself, but they all had XP on them. The one computer that I have which does have Vista doesn't have a parallel port, so I can't test it myself. I guess with Windows 7 out there now, I had better look toward the future.

You might still be able to get the inpout32.dll to work, but I'm still going to go ahead and try to find something better and upgrade the Sun Tracker program to utilize it.

I'll let you know once I have something.

[sunspot]

Gabriel and Jon,
I really appreciate all the help, thank you very much!


Here's where I'm at so far. 

I bought a PCI Parallel port card last night and installed it.  I disable the mother board parallel port in the bios so it wouldn't interfere with the card.  After installing the drivers and going into device manager, I found the card address is something other than 0378-037F.  I tried changing it but the box for changing the configuration is grayed out and there is no way to change it.  I left it as it was and moved on to building a test plug. 

I put together a test plug with 8 LED's and resistors.  The LED's and resistors are on pins 2-9 and I connected pins 18-25 together.  Doing some searching I found a program called Parallel Port Control Program, http://www.geocities.com/micgm/circuit/ppcpv21.zip.  With the new parallel port card installed I tested my test plug with the program, nothing.  It wouldn't work at all.  Since there was no way to change the configuration in device manager I pulled the card, re-enabled the mother board parallel port.  I set the configuration in device manager to 0378 and started testing again.

Finally limited success!  I can get LED's 1 to 7 to light up but LED 8 will not.  I doubled checked the LED polarity and even replaced it with a new one but still it won't light up.  I also tried the limit switch test as described with no success. 

I get the same results of the above testing on my Vista pc, XP Home machine and my Panasonic Toughbook with XP Home.

I'm not giving up yet but it's darn frustrating!

[Gabriel]

Well I guess things are getting a little closer now that there is a least something happening. 

I'm beginning to see though that testing the parallel port with the Sun Tracker program isn't really the best way to do this. The reason being that you can't really see what's going on behind the scenes.

I've attached a program I just wrote which should make things more transparent. If you can get the leds to work with this program, then they should also work with the Sun Tracker program without complaint.



Under "Test Individual Pins: #2-9" you can do exactly that. Enter 2 into the text box, press on, and pin 2 should turn on. Enter 3 into the text box, press on, and pin 3 will turn on. etc.

Under "Test all Pins: #2-9" you can make all of the leds strobe back and forth.  So first pin 2 will turn on and off, then pin 3, then pin 4 and so on and so on until it gets to pin 9 at which point everything reverses direction.

If these two tests work as predicted, then you should be able to run stepper motors through your parallel port.

If you still can't get the leds to work correctly though, try "Test a Different Address" by selecting the "Switch to 278" check box. If this is what fixes the led problem, let me know. I will need to make some changes to the Sun Tracker program for it to work with your computer, but I can make it happen.

I know that you said that you bought a new PCI parallel port card, but couldn't find the correct card address after installing it. If any of the addresses had a 278 instead of a 378, try them with the "Switch to 278" check box selected.


"Read Input from Pins: #10-13" is basically the limit test only slightly different.
What you want to do here is connect pin 10 to one of the ground pins and click the read from pins button. A number should pop up in the textbox. If one does, then you can say that you successfully passed the limit test. Tell me what this number is though because I may have to make a change to the Sun Tracker program for the limits to work correctly with your machine.

Also, I'm sorry that this isn't going as well as it should. Hopefully things should work themselves out before too much longer. Technology is a pain I know.

And thanks for being the first beta tester for this program. Future users should hopefully have an easier time with your help.

[sunspot]

Gabriel,
I tried the test program but still only got LED 1-7 to work, both individually and with the strobe.  When testing the "read from input pins" I got 255 for pins 10, 11, 12 and 13 when grounding them individually.

On a whim I decided to plug my test plug directly into the parallel port instead of the Belking DB25F-DB25M cable I've been using.  And guess what, all 8 LED's now light up, both individually and with strobe.  And when testing the "read from input pins" here's what I get:

Pin 10 returns 63
Pin 11 returns 255
Pin 12 returns 95
Pin 13 returns 111

All this hassle and time spent because of the cable.  When I bought the cable at the PC shop I told them I wanted just a straight thru cable but I guess the one I got isn't.  The cable is a Belkin F2J088-10.

So now I started testing Sun Tracker with my test plug in the port.  The LED test works and so does the limit switch test.  It looks like everything is going to work, just need to get some stepper motors now.  I feel like a fool for not having thought of the cable as being the problem.


I want to thank both you and Jon for the time you've taken to help me with this problem.  I really do appreciate it very much. 

I'll keep you posted on my project, which is going to use a Fresnel lens to heat water.  I've got a 40"x30" spot Fresnel lens the I'm going to mount on a C-band dish mount.  I haven't figured out what I'm going to use as a vessel to heat, maybe a flat plate with a coil of tubing attached to the back side.  I've got an 80 gallon water heater that was made for solar hot water, it's got a heat exchanger jacket on the outside of it.  I want to heat a gylcol solution and pump it into the 80 gallon tank then route my well water through the heat exchanger jacket before going to my house water heater.

I've already got over 200 square feet of hot air solar panels on my house and they heat the house during the day with no problem.  Sometimes I've even got to open a window to let some of the heat out.  At night I use a woodstove for heat.  My propane bill last was only $155 and I get all the firewood free, just got help cut it.

Thanks again,
Chuck

Here's a picture of my solar panels.

[Gabriel]

Awesome! it's working. It's always the obvious things that are the most easily missed isn't it. At least it was just the cable which is an easy fix.

I can't wait to see what you come up with next. What you have so far looks really good. I need to try out those hot air solar panels sometime. I have plenty of glass available. The only problem though is that I would need to cut down a bunch of trees to get access to the sun in the winter. That is not a project I'm in a hurry to start.


If you have trouble with anything else, just let me know and I'll see what I can do to help.

[Jon]

Gabriel, I downloaded your port program.  I didn't have Microsofts "net framework" thing/program, so I had to wait about half and hour for that do automatically download and install, which is good since I needed it for Paint.Net (a paint/graphics program) to run also.  I didnt have that (Microsofts?) inpout32.dll and got that from another site.   I check if inpout32.dll is installed with  RegSvr32  inpout32.dll   and I get an error saying the file was loaded, but the entry point point cannot be found and the file cannot be registered.  I tried some other things, like reloading your program.  Your program does show on the screen, and when I click on things to do, I get "exception error" probably because of the DLL stuff not loaded previously, etc.  Overall, I need more practice and to take some time learning about installing and working with DLL files, your program looks good though and I'm sure it works good, but I will have to take it slow.  By the way, does your program expect a certain wireing of the 25 lines from the  port?, maby my wireing is a different configuration for my project box and I get an error due to my wireing scheme of my parallel port interfacing project box.

[Gabriel]

Yeah I didn't include the .dll file with the parallel port tester program above. I didn't think about the fact that somebody else besides Chuck might want try it. He would have received instructions for installing it on the page where he downloaded the Sun Tracker program, which is here http://www.cerebralmeltdown.com/projects/suntrackprogram/default.htm

I've attached the .dll in case someone wants it.

All you need to do to install it is just put it in this directory. C:\WINDOWS\system32. Does that fix your problem Jon?

If it doesn't, I'm not really sure what's wrong.

Here is the tutorial that I followed when first learning how to use the parallel port. http://www.codeproject.com/KB/vb/Inpout32_read.aspx. You can find more information about it on Google too, of course.

Oh, and the program doesn't check for incorrect wiring, so that wouldn't cause an error. It's not really that sophisticated.   

Also, if you or anybody else would be interested in the source code for the parallel port program, just ask and I'll post it.