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Delphi: Using Dallas MicroLan (aka 1-wire) DS2408 8 bit I/O chip

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If you just want a finished program to monitor up to eight inputs as seen by a DS2408, then you are invited to check out a page describing my shareware answer to that need.... free to try.

If you want a program to monitor the inputs seen by a DS2408, then you will probably be happier with the "tutorial" related to my program DS040.

For a more focused tutorial on the DS2408, with some discussion of using the chip's output facilities, you've come to the right place! This particular tutorial is more than usually sketchy... please don't judge my other tutorials from this. You will find extensive commentary in the source code and helpfile. (Click on the "source code and helpfile" link to download a zip archive with the Delphi sourcecode and a helpfile.) To compile that code, you also need the Dallas unit IBTMEXPW.PAS which is included with the TMEX SDK. You must compile to code, to put the unique ID of your DS2408 into it, and possibly change the adapter type and port number. (These matters are documented within the code.)

The DS2408 is an 8 channel addressable switch, very like a parallel i/o chip, e.g. 6522 or 6821.

The program I've provided in the zip isn't perfect, but it will give you a head start with writing programs to read from or write to the chip's i/o lines.

I've discovered why the program doesn't like you to re-read the chip too often: I left out an "end session" command at the end of the read/ write chip routine. If you are in a hurry to have a version which can read/ write the chip several times a second, have a look at the code which comes with my DS2408 Reader... it has the necessary "end session" stuff... a minor addition. Even without the "end session" stuff, you can use the program this tutorial is about to read / write the DS2408 about 30 times per minute.


For more on the MicroLan and why it's cool, see... My guide to MicroLan


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