Raspberry Pi Desktop on Old PC with Parallel Port

[Mondher4070]

Good Day for you,

First I would like to thank this project's contributors Mr. Lars and Jaap for their effort and commitments.

After one month searching for a Raspberry pi hardware, I released that it's no longer available where I live and will not be in the near future (shortage) and in addition have not the possibility to order one from aboard !
So for this reason, I would like to ask if it's possible to use an old professional pc (HP DC7700 ,dual core x64) with a parallel port as a replacement of a Raspberry Pi with its integrated GPIO.

I did a research in the web and I find that with Linux based OS we can control Parallel port and use 5 of its pins as logical input.
https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/v4.16/driver-api/miscellaneous.html#
https://www.opensourceforu.com/2015/06/using-parallel-ports-to-control-devices/

any suggestions ?

Kindly, Mondher.

[laberning]

Hi Mondher,

getting an affordable raspberry can be difficult these days, but what a pity that it seems to be impossible at your place.

In theory, Open Rowing Monitor can run on quite a few Operating Systems and System Architectures. In fact most of the development of Open Rowing Monitor happens on Linux, Windows and Mac OS.

However there are some things that are quite tailored to the Raspberry PI Hardware: 1) Measuring the rotation of the flywheel (as you already mentioned) and 2) Everything related to Bluetooth Low Energy

For 1) In theory you could measure the impulses with something else, like an external USB device, Parallel Port, or an old Game Port. This is not something that we plan to support in the near future, so you would have to build some logic for that on your own. Basically you would have to build a replacement for GpioTimerService.js. Either as nodejs-Application via some bridging package like node-lpt or directly as native Module (maybe by using the linux parport driver with a little c-program).

For 2) We are using Bleno and Noble for this, so if those work with the hardware of your choice then it should also work with Open Rowing Monitor. For that old HP you would probably require an USB Bluetooth LE device.

To sum it up, building an Open Rowing Monitor setup with a desktop computer certainly isn't plug and play, but it should be doable. So if you have fun with hacking stuff, figuring out specs and building some custom components, then why not.
If your main goal is to just 'smartify' your rower, then I would highly recommend that you stay on the lookout for a raspberry pi.

[Mondher4070]

Hi Laberning,

Thank you very much for your quick answer and the precious clarification.
I will find a way to get a Rasberry Pi for my rower to use your Open Rowing Monitor.