F1 Chrony Serial cable and software
Decided I was tired of writing down each shot, I knew the the Chrony had a serial port so I looked up their web site to see what they had to offer.
cable was way over price and so was the software. Did a bit of web surfing, surprisingly little info on making a cable for the Chrony, finally found someone on the yellow forum who had done it and he was kind enough to share it with me so props to cbotta 8)
Its quite simple really you need a stereo 3.5mm plug and a female db9, I just bought a serial cable and a stereo cable and cut them in half.
You’ll also need a Diode, Any switching diode will work, 1N914, 1N4148, etc
wiring:
Tip: DB9 pin 5 (signal ground)…pointy part of plug…
Middle: DB9 pin 2 (RD)…I call this the middle part because people have different names for it…
Ring: to Cathode side of Diode (striped), anode side to DB9 pin 3 (TD)…upper part of plug…
Couple minutes of solder and your good. plugs directly into your serial port, the good news is that if your laptop doesn’t have a serial port this cable also works with USB-to-Serial adapters
For software I whipped something out in Labview, great program for creating applications quickly.
it displays the last shots FPS, the shot string and also graphs the shot string, you can then save the shot string into a .XLS file
I plan to make this software available free to everyone as soon as I finish tweaking it and find a place to host it, its a bit large at 247 MB’s (down side of Labview)
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Forgot to mention,
I pasted the images from the website to a white background so if you want to use them, copy the ones in the message above.
Bruce
Are you certain that the TIP is ground on the Chrony?
In a normal 3.5mm connector used for sound, the SLEEVE is ground, the RING is the Right channel and the TIP is the Left channel.
Otherwise the grounded tip would short out any outputs to ground when inserted as it passed over each of them and possibly cause serious damage.
Diagram of a 3.5mm plug as used for stereo sound.
1 (TIP) = Left
2 (RING) = Right
3 (SLEEVE) = Ground
DB9/Serial connection (female end… the end with holes in the connector instead of the peni… I mean… pins…)
(From a view of the cable while looking at the connector end with the holes in it, not the pins.) Notice that the pins start Right-Left then down to the next row and AGAIN Right-Left.
DB9: View looking into female connector
DB9: View looking into male connector
Pin Assignments for DB-9 connectors for Serial cables. (male and female connectors use the same pin assignments, but are 180 deg. opposite.)
1 = DCD Data Carrier Detect
2 = RD Receive Data
3 = TD Transmit Data
4 = DTR Data Terminal Ready
5 = SG Signal Ground
6 = DSR Data Set Ready
7 = RTS Request to Send
8 = CTS Clear to Send
9 = Ring Ring Indicator
Above information obtained from here. http://www.zytrax.com/tech/layer_1/cables/tech_rs232.htm
Bruce
I’ve never seen a mini jack to Usb adapter, not saying they don’t exist, just never seen one.
Not sure how they are wired, but you can find both types of cables on ebay for a few bucks.
These schematics were both found on the same website and saved to my hardrive. I made the first one because its simpler –
But it didnt work.
Then I made this one which as you can see is a bit more complicated, but doable even for newbies if your willing to do some research via google –
And that one works fine.
Dogwood, yours doesnt have the transister which is even nicer. I’ll try and draw up a schematic and make another one for myself with that design (I gave my working cable to Cygnusx and havent been bothered to make a replacement).
The question is, how is it wired? if wired correctly then there is no reason you couldn’t.
I’ve never seen a mini jack to Usb adapter, not saying they don’t exist, just never seen one.
Could you just purchase a cable like is used from Tivos and Satellite boxes to connect to PCs? One end has the 1/8″ mini jack while the other has a Serial DB-9 connector. Possibly even skip out on the DB-9 and get 1/8″ mini jack to USB cable?
This software works well and is dos based so will work on any old computer/laptop (I used it with a 166mhz Panasonic Toughbook). It will export into xls I beleive (been a while since I used it) which you can open and manipulate on a more powerful machine/software app
Chronys.exe
http://home.hiwaay.net/~ispellan/Software.html
I found and saved a simple schematic online. I cant find it with google at the moment, but it should be on my PC so I’ll check when I get home.
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yep quite positive tip is gnd, and your right it is a bit unusual.
since most gnds on wires like the stereo cable are used as a shield I had to carefully twist it into a useable wire to solder to.
thanks for the diagrams they could come in handy