[Coco] CoCo robotics?

[George's Coco Address]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Gene Heskett"
>
> Talk to George Ramsower, he's been playing with teeny milling machine
> type projects I believe.
>
> -- 
> On Friday 10 February 2006 16:04, Jim Cox wrote:
>>To follow up Art's test to the list, I'll ask a rhetorical
>>question just get a resonse;
>>
>>Is anyone out there currently doing anything closely
>>related to robotics with the CoCo?
>>
>>I have a small robot arm that I was thinking of hooking up
>>one day and playing around with, but as with many of my
>>ideas/plans/goals, it will be some time before it happens.
>>
>>-Jim

 I was thinking about responding to this.

 Thank you Gene, for sparking me.

Jim.

 I need to know how this robot arm is wired.

 I'm pretty sure that it uses permanent magnet DC motors. This isn't a 
problem, but would be very different than if it used stepper motors.

 With stepping motors, you can calculate where it is simply by knowing what 
you tell it to do... providing it actually does as told.
 With DC motors, it is required that some form of feedback is provided.

 If you DON'T want REALLY precise movements on a DC motor with feedback, a 
joystick port would suffice. (0-64)
 If you NEED precision, then you will need a good A/D converter. My favorite 
is an old chip design that can handle eight channels with 12 bit resolution. 
I will have to go look to see what the part number is.

 In both cases, you will be required to build a circuit board to interface 
the coco to the machine.

 I have such a system that allows the coco to use eight address spaces to 
provide four, eight bit output latches and four, eight bit input buffers. 
With this board, I can connect other things that I design, such as something 
that you might need in robotics.
 My TINY CNC machine requires some power switching to make it work. 
Therefore, it has another box that plugs into the board I just mentioned.

 The BOX has a power supply to provide the power needed to run stepping 
motors, big transistors and some other stuff. It also provides a path for 
feedback from my TINY CNC machine.

 I'll post some info about this on one of my websites. (requires photos)

 Hmm..

 Maybe I'll put some info on other COCO projects there also.

 How about a CC3 with a built-in switching power supply, 3.5 inch floppy and 
controller and you can still plug stuff into the expansion slot?

 Did it and I still have it.

 Film at eleven..

 George