I have a piece of medical equipment that records
heartbeats, and it has a connector (female) on the
back of it with that is "25 pin".


Basically it has a probe to put on the finger, and
it displays the heartbeat on the front of the unit.


I was wondering if there is a way to hook something
up to the 25pin connection, and have the information
may be printed out or something? or maybe sent to a
computer?

It is surplus, and we are going to donate it to ship
overseas, but I was wondering if someone with more
electronics experience than I could possibly tell me
how to do this? I imagine it would be easy to get
an old dot matrix printer and maybe just let it print?










Am I on the right track? Any advice greatly appreciated,
I would hate to see it end up in the junk pile.


Thankyou.

jimbo <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...

> I have a piece of medical equipment that
> records heartbeats, and it has a connector
> (female) on the back of it with that is "25 pin".

> Basically it has a probe to put on the finger, and
> it displays the heartbeat on the front of the unit.

> I was wondering if there is a way to hook
> something up to the 25pin connection, and have
> the information may be printed out or something?

Most likely it is a serial port, and can print to a serial printer.

> or maybe sent to a computer?

Yes, very likely.

> It is surplus, and we are going to donate
> it to ship overseas, but I was wondering if
> someone with more electronics experience
> than I could possibly tell me how to do this?

It isnt that easy to do by instruction. There really
needs to be some trial and error to work out the
baud rate, and maybe the flow control used etc.

Doable, but not easy to list in a sentance or two.

> I imagine it would be easy to get an old
> dot matrix printer and maybe just let it print?

Serial isnt that simple. Most dot matrix printers arent
serial although many could have a serial card added.

> Am I on the right track?

Yes, but its not completely trivial to do.

> Any advice greatly appreciated, I would
> hate to see it end up in the junk pile.

On 12 Sep 2003 00:31:59 -0700
(E-Mail Removed) (jimbo) wrote:

> I have a piece of medical equipment that records
> heartbeats, and it has a connector (female) on the
> back of it with that is "25 pin".
>
>
> Basically it has a probe to put on the finger, and
> it displays the heartbeat on the front of the unit.
>
>
> I was wondering if there is a way to hook something
> up to the 25pin connection, and have the information
> may be printed out or something? or maybe sent to a
> computer?
>
> It is surplus, and we are going to donate it to ship
> overseas, but I was wondering if someone with more
> electronics experience than I could possibly tell me
> how to do this? I imagine it would be easy to get
> an old dot matrix printer and maybe just let it print?

You need to find the manual for that piece of equipment and determine
what type of signalling is present and for what purpose the connector
was put there. It could be a standard parallel printer port and the
output could be plain ASCII, in which case all you have to do is hook up
a parallel printer. On the other hand it could be a control port of
some kind in which case you may not be able to print from it at all. Or
it may have some other purpose.

A 25-pin D connector is just that, a connector--it can be used for many
purposes.

> Am I on the right track? Any advice greatly appreciated,
> I would hate to see it end up in the junk pile.
>
>
> Thankyou.


--
--
--John
Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

Hi:

Rod has addressed many of your questions. Here is one more comment: There
must be some kind of hardware/software interface between your device and the
printer, i.e., an analog-to-digital data acquisition unit that will acquire
the signal coming from your device and then feed the digitized data into a
computer program that then translates the data into code recognizable by the
printer. As Rod said, this is not a trivial endeavor.

One other thought. If your device does the digitizing, you are halfway
there. The fact that your device has a 25-pin connector makes me wonder.

"jimbo" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> I have a piece of medical equipment that records
> heartbeats, and it has a connector (female) on the
> back of it with that is "25 pin".
>
>
> Basically it has a probe to put on the finger, and
> it displays the heartbeat on the front of the unit.
>
>
> I was wondering if there is a way to hook something
> up to the 25pin connection, and have the information
> may be printed out or something? or maybe sent to a
> computer?
>
> It is surplus, and we are going to donate it to ship
> overseas, but I was wondering if someone with more
> electronics experience than I could possibly tell me
> how to do this? I imagine it would be easy to get
> an old dot matrix printer and maybe just let it print?
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Am I on the right track? Any advice greatly appreciated,
> I would hate to see it end up in the junk pile.
>
>
> Thankyou.