Digital Input device to c#

Question

The Problem:

• I'm writing an application that needs to receive electrical input from a machine every time the machine does something.
  • I have a Limit switch set up to the machine and it currently completes a circuit every time the machine does it's thing
  • I need it to input into a computer using usb as oppose to just complete a circuit.
  • I had a dataq 'dl-148u-sp' And i got the c# code to produce a graph using ActiveX controls but all i really need is the digital output from the circuit being completed (which for the life of me i couldn't figure out how to do)..
  • I ended up frying the device(i think) even the software it came with doesn't recognize it anymore...
  • I need a new device, and it turns out they discontinued the one i had, and the next one up after shipping is like 90$.

The Question:

Is there a Better/Cheaper/Easier way of doing this? Or can anyone suggest a Good device that's easy to get the output using c# code so i can incorporate it into a program i made?

Answer 1

More expensive and complex board is IOFirebug with c# library and many functions. Input voltage range is from 5V to 30V.

Answer 2

It's not clear if you are asking for a hardware or software solution here. Are you asking what the best way to facilitate that data transfer from your machine to the PC? If so, this may not be the place to ask, but you might look at a USB to GPIO module.

http://numato.com/8-channel-usb-gpio-module is an example.

Answer 3

I'd recommend an Arduino:

http://www.arduino.cc/playground/Main/InterfacingWithHardware

They dev kits are cheap and there's a ton of open/free libraries that interface the Arduino to C#.