Hey guys. I've found the dlp-txrx serial to usb connector and had an idea. My goal is to take some of the inputs from a car (throttle position, brake position, clutch position for now) and feed them into a laptop for datalogging. I can create the inputs fine and read them out as a 0-5v led bar graph but getting them into a laptop is another story.

I was wondering if/how I could use the usb connector to get the inputs into a laptop?

 

ok never mind that isn't right.

I simply want to take a few 0-5v inputs and be able to display their outputs on a laptop/computer via whatever means (usb/serial/smoke signal)

 

That will require an external analog to digital converter. Here is a link to some such gear - http://www.dataq.com/data-acquisition-starter-kits/data-acquisition-starter-kits.htm

 

Many MCU like PIC or AVR have both ADC on chip and UART built in. So reading in analogue data and retransmit them via serial port is easy.

On many AVR, user has one additional option to interface the chip with a laptop using USB, via software only USB code available from OBDEV.

It would be difficult if you have no experience in using these chips.