Switch Circuit

[rkear89]

I am considering buying a RaspberryPi for a personal project that I will need to program the Pi to have multiple switch, diodes, and capacitors. Does anyone have any experience with this type of development on a Pi or know if it is possible? Any assistance would be helpful and appreciated. I'm not asking for someone to code it for me, I just need to know if it might be possible. Thanks!

[RaspISteve]

rkear89,
I would suggest you go and start reading the Magpi emag from issue 1 to date to get the necessary background and work through it to see what folk are doing with their Pi and maybe pillage from there.

Maybe invest in one of the increasing number of add-on boards to avoid having to deal with "multiple switch, diodes, and capacitors". Also, you're likely to need a few resistors in your mix of bits. There is more to electronics than just buying a load of bits so best pick an add-on board that'll take you towards your target application.

[iinnovations]

It's not really possible to determine what "this type of development" is from your post. If you can be more specific about your application, I'm sure many would be willing to help.

C

[rkear89]

What I meant was development more along the lines of just a straight circuit without a lot of automation or computing. Just use the Pi to create a circuit of diodes, switches, and capacitors rather than having all separate components wired together, just have it all programmed within the Pi with some automation for the frequency of the switching.

Thank you. I will look into the MagPi issues and see what others have done. I had taken a quick look but I skim through more of them. I will also look at the different types of add-on board available.

[Tarcas]

Are you talking about making the Pi into a sort of advanced FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array)?

What are you actually trying to accomplish? It sounds like what you're asking is "instead of doing something in hardware, can I just do it in software on the Pi?" Which, of course, can be answered only "Maybe. It depends what you're talking about doing." So stop being vague and tell us what you're talking about doing if you want specific advice.

[rkear89]

I want to use the Pi to make a circuit that I can program the values of the different components as well as the switches rather than having to buy components of several different values and recreate the circuit each time I want to test with different values. The circuit will be integrated with a few batteries as well. Specific enough?

[RaspISteve]

At last!

Sounds like you want to investigate circuit simulation which usually involves some form of schematic entry system to define your circuit design followed by the host emulating the equivalent of what you've entered. Whether the necessary software exists the way you want it for the Pi is another thing. Best you do a search for "circuit simulation". I just searched for "linux circuit simulation" and got over 400,000 hits. Doing "raspberry pi circuit simulation" will get you 82K hits, some here of this forum. Best you try it yourself.

What you won't be able to do easily is join it up to real time inputs and outputs and other than pure simulation adding a real battery will be out of the question.

Hope this helps.

[rkear89]

What you won't be able to do easily is join it up to real time inputs and outputs and other than pure simulation adding a real battery will be out of the question.

Thank you! I think that will definitely help! I will look into the posts from this forum. But what exactly do you mean by "pure simulation." Regardless thank you for the direction!

[RaspISteve]

What you won't be able to do easily is join it up to real time inputs and outputs and other than pure simulation adding a real battery will be out of the question.

Thank you! I think that will definitely help! I will look into the posts from this forum. But what exactly do you mean by "pure simulation." Regardless thank you for the direction!

rkear89,
Basically a computer will simulate a circuit in the same way a human would work out what would happen just by thinking about the circuit. Adding a real battery to an ephemeral thought hasn't been done yet. Generally circuit simulation is at sub-real time speeds and real inputs are themselves simulated. Output would appear as files of stuff or visualised on a simulation of an oscilloscope or logic analyser maybe even a bunch of pixels on a screen.

I see you're into another thread on this topic http://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewt ... 37&t=66164. Your answer there is the output from the schematic capture process is more likely to be a proprietary file format and not a text file. Printing it would get you nonsense.