Perl is fine for hardware control as long as you aren't really speed-conscious. For dealing with serial I/O, I've used Device::SerialPort and Event. For dealing with the parallel port, you could use Inline. You don't say what OS platform you're on; if you're using Linux, you could use ioperm to gain access to the address ranges for the parallel port, or use /dev/parport. Under Win9x (DOS) you could use Inline directly to talk to the parallel port. Under NT, I'm not sure.

I wrote a module for dealing with external hardware through the I2C and/or SMBus (in my case, a smart battery and smart battery charger, but you could also get to CPU temperature sensors, serial A/D converters, etc.). Under Linux, there's already the i2c drivers and the lm-sensors project; if you use this, the bulk of the work is already done for you.

I also hacked one of the i2c-algo-bit device drivers to work with the Maxim SMBus interface card; if you're interested in this, /msg me.

In reply to Re: Perl to control hardware by bikeNomad
in thread Perl to control hardware by toma

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