Homebrew Seatalk PC interface

[sailboy21]

I ran across a website which details building a seatalk to serial port connection, and programming in C to interface with seatalk devices. It seems to makes sense, but I cant seem to "hear" or talk to my autopilot on my laptop. I constructed both the "unidirectional" and "bidirectional seatalk-RS232 interfaces and neither yielded any results.

Has anyone done this before?

BTW, my purpose in doing this project is to use a wireless game controller to control my S1 wheelpilot. I dont want to pay $500 for a remote when I can make my one for $30 .

Here is the website that aided and embedded this attempt to avoid being a good consumer.
www thomasknauf de / seatalk htm
Thanks

[therapy23]

They make waterproof game controllers?

[byrondv]

Fun project - and I am going to have to bookmark that link in the hopes I get around to integrating my laptop with an autopilot.

From your description it sounds like you have having issues w/ the device driver portion of your system. Though it could be anyone of a number of things. I am assuming that you are using the listed C code on the page (and not the Windows version in the *.zip slightly further down). My guess would be that you are running Windows - not a true MS-DOS environment. The hardware abstraction layer in Windows doesn't allow for using ports based on memory-mapped IO (otherwise it would be possible to stomp all over another program's IO).

So, I would first look into your code / OS. Ensure you can at output pins and input pins (a Multimeter can be useful for this - otherwise a paper clip and an LED can work wonders).

Once you get that working - I would ensure that your custom circuit board is translating the data correctly (again - ensure you are getting _something_ in both directions).

If you post some more info (OS, which code you are using, compiler, and where the point of failure is (custom hardware, or custom software)) I could say a bit more.

Good luck!