- LEGO Interface A
- Ressurecting the LEGO Interface A
- Some findings with Interface A
- LEGO Interface A – the Python Turtle
By modern criteria, the Interface A is quite simple: it has 2 inputs that accept TTL levels and 6 power outputs able to turn ON or OFF 6 ‘devices’ like motors or lamps. These 6 output can be used independently or in pairs. A motor connected to a single output just turns ON or OFF so it rotates always in the same direction but when connected to a pair of outputs it can rotate in both directions. I think (but I’m not sure) that this is implemented through an H-bridge – if true, motors can also stop in two ways (Break and Coast).
There are a few web resources with excellent information about the LEGO Interface A:
- 9750 (1093) LEGO Technic Interface A
- LEGO – LEGO’s first programmable product
- LEGO TC LOGO Set 1093 Instructions (now available only through the Web Archive)
So the Interface A uses 6 pins from the Data port of the Parallel Printer Interface (D0..D5) for Output and 2 pins from the Status port (Paper Empy and Select) for Input. Two other pins from the Control port (STROBE and AUTO FEED) are used to get the +5 Volt that power the optocouplers that assure electric isolation between the computer circuits and the external world circuits – these are also powered by a 7.5V AC transformer with at least 11 Watt (VA), not easy to find but we can use a good 12V power adapter with at least 1A output (preferably 15V/2A) because there is an internal rectifier bridge [that reduces average voltage to half].
A note about the power adapter: my first attempts were with a cheap linear “universal” wall adapter, just 300 mA output, at 12V. It worked but when issuing commands to motors, every time the motor stopped I saw both Input green LEDs blinking. With a decent switched wall adapter, 2000 mA, also at 12V, never happened again.
Before using the FTDI adapter I manually tested my Interface A, using a 4.5V battery to power the optocouplers (just need to connect one of the two Control pins, they are internally shorted; same for Ground pins). Some jumper wires directly attached to the 20-pin IDC connector and I was controlling a 4.5V Technic motor:
Only issue was finding pin 1: it is the top pin from right. I made a mistake and started with the top pin from left and it started to smell bad – amazingly, it didn’t destroy my Interface A.
So these are the pins (based on the table available at L Gauge)
| Pin | Function |
| 1 | VCC: +5V |
| 2 | – |
| 3 | VCC: +5V |
| 4 | – |
| 5 | Ground |
| 6 | Output Bit 0 |
| 7 | Ground |
| 8 | Output Bit 1 |
| 9 | Ground |
| 10 | Output Bit 2 |
| 11 | Ground |
| 12 | Output Bit 3 |
| 13 | Ground |
| 14 | Output Bit 4 |
| 15 | Ground |
| 16 | Output Bit 5 |
| 17 | Ground |
| 18 | Input Bit 6 |
| 19 | Ground |
| 20 | Input Bit 7 |
Don’t need to use all pins – pin 1 and 3 (VCC) are internally connected, as all Ground pins – if we keep wires short between the FTDI adapter and the Interface A, we don’t need so many Ground wires (on a long flat cable they help minimizing noise). I used just 10 (VCC, GND and 8xI/O).
Now I need to connect these pins to an USB FTDI adapter with enough pins, like the Sparkfun Breakout Board for FT232RL USB to Serial.
Most of the information needed I got from this post: FT232: FTDI’s Bit Bang using Python (Parallel Port Replaced !!)
I used the 8 pins available in Bitbang mode:
Output 0 TXD Output 1 RXD Output 2 RTS# Output 3 CTS# Output 4 DTR# Output 5 DSR# Input 6 DCD# Input 7 RI#
To use these pins we just need to configure the bitbang port to use the 2 most significant bits as inputs and the 6 least significant bits as outputs.
The +5 Volt to power the optocouplers is also available as VCC.
So these are the pins I use:
(and, of course, at least one GND pin)
I decided to use pylibftdi. On my Ubuntu 17.04 I just needed
sudo apt-get install libftdi1-dev sudo pip3 install pylibftdi
To use it I need to know the serial number of my FTDI. That’s available from dmesg:
[ 253.177269] usb 1-6.2: new full-speed USB device number 10 using xhci_hcd [ 253.272003] usb 1-6.2: New USB device found, idVendor=0403, idProduct=6001 [ 253.272012] usb 1-6.2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3 [ 253.272017] usb 1-6.2: Product: FT232R USB UART [ 253.272022] usb 1-6.2: Manufacturer: FTDI [ 253.272027] usb 1-6.2: SerialNumber: A105BPBO [ 253.317758] usbcore: registered new interface driver ftdi_sio [ 253.317781] usbserial: USB Serial support registered for FTDI USB Serial Device [ 253.317912] ftdi_sio 1-6.2:1.0: FTDI USB Serial Device converter detected [ 253.317949] usb 1-6.2: Detected FT232RL [ 253.319094] usb 1-6.2: FTDI USB Serial Device converter now attached to ttyUSB3
Or we can use the ‘pylibftdi.examples.list_devices’ provided with the library:
sudo python3 -m pylibftdi.examples.list_devices FTDI:FT232R USB UART:A105BPBO
(pylibftdi requires root privileges unless we write an udev rule for our device)
So I’m writing a python script that uses the computer keyboard to control the individual output ports 0..5 or the pair ports A..C and constantly polls the state of the input ports 6 and 7.