robotics

[Björnke von Gierke]

Hi Greg

Warning: I am a hobbyist at best, and haven't done any actual work with 
robotics. However i wanted to do a remote controlled vehicle once, and 
have sampled some information on rs232 due to that.

I am not sure how many "datalines" you need (the number of sensors you 
want to poll + the number of motors you want to steer) If the number is 
less or equal 8 then you could use a serial to parallel interface, like 
described on this page: http://www.beyondlogic.org/serial/serial2.htm

I never got to do it, because i couldn't get all the parts, as the 
schematic seems to be highly outdated, but the principle should be 
doable. You might as a soldering guru how to do that correctly.

What you do is talk via the serial port with 8 bit code, which then 
gets translated into 8 single digital lines. for example if you send an 
"a", you actually send "10000110" (or "01100001" i always confuse the 
order) so these 3 lines will get power (5v), each of which you can then 
use to steer a motor. The same is true in reverse for reading data off 
the port.

Also a warning at the end: For real time application i _guess_ that 
Rev/MC is not ideal, due to the way polling is set up. Basically the 
whole thing can be blocked by a processor intensive task or other 
means. For example on Mac OS X, no "send in x minutes" messages get 
send as long as you drag the rev window around.

if you have further questions  join chatrev and we discuss it...

greetings
Bjoernke


On Jun 05 2006, at 19:51, Greg Kolodziejzyk wrote:

> Hey:
>
> I am a long-time METACARD user, and I am working on a project where 
> some
> robotics is required. I have NO experience with robotics, sensors or
> controllers, but I thought it might be a cool learning experience. I
> also thought I could use metacard (Rev) to control the robotics stuff.
>
> Does anyone out there have any experience with using Rev for robotics? 
> I
> would like to find a consultant or company that I could contract to 
> help
> me set this up.
>
> If you are interested, the application is an auto-balance / auto-steer
> mechanism for a human powered vehicle I built for a speed record:
>
> http://www.adventuresofgreg.com/HPVMain.html
>
> Thanks,
> Greg K

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