Since reading an article about the IO-Warrior chip in the german computer magazine
c't
( Issue 7/2004, Page 208 ), I planned to build a board with that chip to play around with.
The
IO-Warrior 24
is a chip for doing easy digital I/O operations over the USB port without the need to code a driver.
This is possible because the device is recognized as a HID (Human Interface Device). The chip itself
can be used to control 16 general purpose I/O pins and it has special functions built in for controlling
f.ex. 4x20 character LCDs with HD44780 chipset. It also has the capability to receive IR remote control
messages conform to the RC-5 standard.
I for myself bought a IO-Warrior 24 kit with the 4x20 character LCD mentioned in the c't article. Therefore
all of the following software is coded for this constellation. But since it´s free open-source, it should
not be hard to adapt the code for your special hardware requirements...
Winamp 5 Plugin (v0.21)
A Plugin for Winamp Version 5 which enables IR remote control functionality with the IO-Warrior 24
and a RC-5 compatible remote. Since version 0.2, there is also support to display info on a 4x20 LCD.
Sourcecode (plain C) is available as a seperate download package. Click
here
for a webcam shot of the 4x20 LCD ( bad quality ).