Hey, I'd just like to preface the description of my idea for a project with this statement: I am very new to circuitry. I would also like to say that I LOVE a challenging project and am very eager to learn whatever I need to in order to build my idea. I've started reading the tutorials on the homepage of this website, started being the keyword.
Moving on, here is exactly what I'm trying to do:
I've had the idea of making a series of computer controlled strobe lights or other types of lights that one would find at a party for about two weeks now. I've known that I can easily do the programming for such a project, but the actual hardware aspect is currently beyond me (My high school offers nothing in the way of electronics courses or even an adequate programming course, so I'm left to learn everything on my own).
After seeing an article on Digg entitled "How to make a computer controlled light show for less than 40$" (http://www.divshare.com/download/2547304-709) I thought to myself, "Wow, I would love to do that!" So, I read the steps of the project and thought that it was all very doable and that the programming won't be a problem at all. That is, until I realized that the relay board that the author of the article used was controlled by a parallel port. My problem is that house only has Apple computers which have no parallel ports.
I then began to search for USB controlled relays, but I don't really know what I am looking at. I do know that I would like to have the ability to turn on and off a series of 120 volt strobe lights within a split second based on messages sent from a computer to a controller board. Ideally I would like to be able to have 8 individually controllable relays which I can turn on and off at least 20 times per second (If that is possible!).
Any suggestions, links, or step by step tutorials with images would be awesome!
Moving on, here is exactly what I'm trying to do:
I've had the idea of making a series of computer controlled strobe lights or other types of lights that one would find at a party for about two weeks now. I've known that I can easily do the programming for such a project, but the actual hardware aspect is currently beyond me (My high school offers nothing in the way of electronics courses or even an adequate programming course, so I'm left to learn everything on my own).
After seeing an article on Digg entitled "How to make a computer controlled light show for less than 40$" (http://www.divshare.com/download/2547304-709) I thought to myself, "Wow, I would love to do that!" So, I read the steps of the project and thought that it was all very doable and that the programming won't be a problem at all. That is, until I realized that the relay board that the author of the article used was controlled by a parallel port. My problem is that house only has Apple computers which have no parallel ports.
I then began to search for USB controlled relays, but I don't really know what I am looking at. I do know that I would like to have the ability to turn on and off a series of 120 volt strobe lights within a split second based on messages sent from a computer to a controller board. Ideally I would like to be able to have 8 individually controllable relays which I can turn on and off at least 20 times per second (If that is possible!).
Any suggestions, links, or step by step tutorials with images would be awesome!