Paralell port project for burglar alarm on xp

[spirit339a]

Hello,
 
enjoyed your site. I would like a program or driver where the parallel port detects a pin change with connection to my burglar alarm. I would connect to pin using an optoisolator and when it changes state, Hi or LO , i would like it dial my phone and let me know of the occurence , also I could listen in thru the Laptop's mic. Running XP. Ive thought maybe a macro to dial SKYPE. How would i get the change of state on paralell port to trigger SKPE to auto dial? I know there are autodialers out there. thanks for your time.
 spirit339a@netscape.net

[Jan Axelson]

For tools to read port bits, on this page:

http://www.janaxelson.com/parport.htm#Programming

scroll down to inpout32.dll

To detect a change in port state, your program can read the port repeatedly in a loop. This assumes that the state change will persist long enough to detect it. Writing a program that uses a hardware interrupt would require a low-level driver; DriverX is one option:

http://www.tetradyne.com/driverx.htm

Another option is to use a serial port and detect a change on a flow-control line (.NET SerialPort class).

Jan