Velleman K8000 - [K8000 Stand alone Usage]

K8000 Stand alone Usage

Ways for a standalone control

The K8000 can be used without a computer that is constantly running. To do this you need to use another piece of hardware to control it. Velleman used to sell a dedicated kit for that: the Velleman K8001. This stand alone module was microcontroller based and could be programmed in some kind of assembler language. Unfortunately Velleman no longer sells this kit.

So a second option is to use your own microcontroller to control the K8000. This is fairly easy if you choose a microcontroller with I²C capabilities. You would need only 4 wires to make a connection between the microcontroller and the K8000: SCL/SDA/GND/+5V.

There is another option: you can control the K8000 with a FEZ Panda II board. This is a complete microprocessor board that can be programmed with C#. The board is very powerful and supports the I2C protocol. View my page for the FEZ.

Controlling the K8000 with a PIC microcontroller

I designed a sample circuit to control the Velleman K8000 with the PIC16F84 microcontroller. The circuit is complete but the software for the microcontroller is still in an experimental phase. Get more information.

Controlling the K8000 with the FEZ Panda II

Here you can find some sample applications that are using the K8000 together with a FEZ Panda II. These applications are using a software class I wrote. See more information about this class and how to connect the FEZ with your K8000.

RC5 receiver application: This program can be used to control your K8000 by using a standard Philips remote control.

Home Automation application: This is a very flexible program you can adjust to create your own home automation applications.

Wireless Wi-Fi K8000 / K8000 TCP/IP Server: This is a very interesting project to control the K8000 over a wireless Wi-Fi connection. The FEZ Panda II is used as a bride between K8000 and ethernet network. The projects comes with a sample server & client project.