Dick Hurtz

Thanks Paul for the obvious effort. I broke bad and ordered some parts online including a ton of shift registers, and an LCD touch screen link to that. Kind of commits me to making this thing but I hope I didn't get in over my head. I'm definitely better at hardware than software but not even especially good at that hehe.

I found a thing online to make drawings so I updated what I had in mind for this device
 Drawing1.png   57.77KB   22 downloads

If I understand I would send a code "00000" to the shift registers, and when I touch the probe to one leg of a shift register I should receive "00010" and know I was touching pin 4. And as a requirement, "00111" if 3,4,5 were tied together.

It seems do-able to get the display to show an illustration of what's going on. I was thinking that for each adapter cable I make I would reserve some pins and attach a DIP switch, and list each connector to a switch setting. Program that into the netduino so when you plug in any connector's adapter cable in it would know which graphic to show and numbers to allow. I suppose I could do the same thing by adding different resistor values to different connectors, would that work?

This is where my lack of programming skills is stopping me. I have a few books on C# but they are pretty dry. Could someone tell me what chapters I should focus on for what I'm doing? Do I need to learn all the functions, because it seems like I could get by with just a few. I don't really know where to start with that.

I'm really hoping I can get this display to work. Has anyone had success with this combination? I originally wanted a separate display and keypad, but couldn't find one with letters and numbers. I have a feeling I might have to subcontract this. 4DGL criminies.

I guess I'll post if my parts arrive. Thanks for any and all input.