mildsunrise / parport.js

[DEPRECATED] High-level Node.JS interface to parallel ports.

Parport.JS

Parport.js is a Node.JS addon you can use to access, control and communicate with parallel ports.
It uses the C++/Java library Parallel-Port to provide a high-level and cross-platform^✝ interface.

npm install parport

License

As Parallel-Port is distributed under the GPL, I'm forced to do the same (which I perfectly agree). So, Parport.JS is distributed under the GPLv3.

Usage

var par = require('parport');

var port = new par.Port();
port.writeControl(241);
console.log('Data:', port.readData());
console.log('Status:', port.readStatus());

You can pass an ID to pick which port to open (useful if you have more than one):

var port = new par.Port(1);
port.writeData(110);

And remember:

Exceptions may be thrown
if something goes wrong.

Full documentation can be found under doc/.
More examples can be found under examples/.

Compatibility

Important: these are only the bindings to Node.JS. The common interface to the platform-dependent functions is in Parallel-Port.

Parallel-Port currently works on the following platforms:

• Linux: through the parport driver (usually comes with kernel, see /dev/parport0).

• Windows: through the Inpout32 library (free for non-commercial use only).
  It seems it doesn't work on 64-bit Windows, though.

Platforms with no (but planned) support:

• Darwin (that is, Mac OSX and iOS) not supported.

parport.js's Issues

parport.markdown file is empty

The only file under the doc folder is empty. The revision date is 2/3/2015 so we do appreciate the revision. Also I can't find the examples folder that was discussed.

I couldn't get this library to build with nw-gyp for versions above 0.8.0

I think the API has changed so that this library doesn't build for versions over 0.8.0

readData() not useful.

I have the package installed and I can write the port just fine but I can't read data through the port. I can only read back what had been written. Not much value there. How do we get the ECP direction turned around so we can read data from the outside world? The port's output buffer needs to be tristated.

Once port is set to reverse (input) unable to set back to forward (output)

Upon startup the output port is working properly as an output. After setting the control register C5 to reverse then data can be read successfully on the port:

     port.writeControl(32);   // set C5
     var data = port.readData(); 

Now is the trouble:

     port.writeControl(0);   // clear C5
     port.writeData(255);

This does nothing. I can see from monitoring the external pins that the port is still in reverse mode/ tristated.

When I stop the process and restart then the port comes up in forward (output) direction until the C5 is set again.

node-gyp rebuild fails

Hi,
I am trying to install the package on a Windows 10, 64 bit system.

After I got a lot of (to me) cryptic error messages under the latest installation of Node.js, I tried to revert back to an earlier version of Node (5.0.0). There the error appears more clear:

npm ERR! Tell the author that this fails on your system:
npm ERR!     node-gyp rebuild

Do you have some idea what could resolve this?

Thank you!
Nico