Description
I am currently a senior in a computer engineering technology degree. For my senior project, my team is developing an RFID parking garage system. When pulling into the parking garage, parkers will swipe an RFID tag, then be instructed to park. All parking transactions will be stored in a database and can later be billed to the parkers. The RFID reader is attached to a PIC 18F458 microcontroller which will be interfaced, via the serial port, to a pc running a front end program. My title as software engineer requires me to design the front end program on the pc which needs to interface to the PIC.
Software Development
My partner who is in charge of the hardware including the PIC microcontroller lives about 1 hour away so its not always plausible to get together to test the functionality of my program and his hardware. With the Virtual Serial Port Kit, I can create a virtual null-modem cable from COM1 to COM2. My program connects on COM1 and I connect HyperTerminal on COM2. This way I am able to simulate the strings that his hardware would send to my program and test the functionality of my program. In this way, we were able to develop our respective hardware and software without having to physically be together.
Thank you very much for this very convenient program!
Paul Tiarks