linux-controlled LED flashlight?

[markw-FJ05HQ0HCKaWd6l5hS35sQ at public.gmane.org (Mark Woodward)]

On 10/09/2010 12:00 PM, discuss-request-mNDKBlG2WHs at public.gmane.org wrote:
> Message: 6
> Date: Fri, 08 Oct 2010 22:44:18 -0400
> From: David Kramer<david-8uUts6sDVDvs2Lz0fTdYFQ at public.gmane.org>
> Subject: Re: linux-controlled LED flashlight?
> To:discuss-mNDKBlG2WHs at public.gmane.org
> Message-ID:<4CAFD702.3060600-8uUts6sDVDvs2Lz0fTdYFQ at public.gmane.org>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> On 10/08/2010 02:35 PM, R. Luoma wrote:
>    
>> >  Has anyone on this list hacked an LED flashlight
>> >  to be controlled by a linux system?
>> >  
>> >  If so, what hardware interface did you use?
>>      
> Mark Woodward might have more to say about this than me, but a cheap and
> relatively quick way of turning a few things on and off is the parallel
> port.  The hardware is dead simple.  Software for controlling 8 things
> or less is pretty easy using the data pins, but you can get two or three
> more with the status pins.  I have a book called "Parallel Port
> Complete" you can borrow if you're interested.
>
> I'm more into X10, which would work too. and allow remote operations.
>    

X10 is pretty cool. Do you have the USB version or the old serial port 
version? Do you use Heyu?

Anyway to the original poster's question....

How is your electronics? Do you program? If you own a soldering iron and 
can do some basic programming, what you want to do is trivial.



If you have an old style parallel port on your computer, you can use a 
2n2222 transistor (with a resistor) to run your LED flashlight. Here's a 
pin-out of the printer port:

http://www.linuxpcrobot.org/?q=node/5

If you don't have such a device, You-Do-It electronics has a velleman 
k8055 USB I/O board. Or you could go to Microcenter and get a cheap 
parallel port card for a few bucks.