Alt-BEAM Archive
Message #09103
To: beam@sgiblab.sgi.com
From: Bruce Robinson Bruce_Robinson@telus.net
Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2000 10:40:18 -0800
Subject: [alt-beam] Re: pancake motors
Jonathan D Rogers wrote:
>
> p.s. why is everyone whining about driving stepper motors? wouldn't
> it be simple to interface to a microcore, bicore, etc. on the TTL
> level to a stepper driver circuit?
Yep. Wilf sent in a circuit to do precisely this. With luck you'll find
it on the BEAM heretics page.
Bruce
9104 Wed, 12 Jan 2000 14:07:17 -0500 [alt-beam] Re: yet more motors beam@sgiblab.sgi.com Jonathan D Rogers Well, I found my other Sony drive, took the motor out of it, and tested
it.
It ran off an old transistor-only solarengine with an NEC 0.047 F cap in
it pretty well.
It draws less than 100mA no load at about 1-1.5V.
These specs seem to be rather similar to a pager motor.
And now I have two of them!!
Unfortunately, I have no 1381s on hand, so I'm going down to radio shack
to buy some flashing LEDs to try out Ben's FLED circuit on these lovely
little motors.
No idea who makes them.
One of them has a little circle symbol on it that looks just like a
Mercedes-Benz symbol, if anyone knows what that means.
I also have two small solenoids now, if anyone wants to buy
them(elmo?)...
But I know very little about solenoids, so I can't tell if they're push,
pull, or what.
They have a rod that slides in loose and sticks out one end...
jonathan
9105 Wed, 12 Jan 2000 20:38:37 CET [alt-beam] Re: yet more motors beam@sgiblab.sgi.com "johannes urke" hehe i know even less about solenoids,
aint got a clue what it is so inform me a bit on this one
>From: Jonathan D Rogers
>Reply-To: beam@sgiblab.sgi.com
>To: beam@sgiblab.sgi.com
>Subject: Re: yet more motors
>Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2000 14:07:17 -0500
>
>Well, I found my other Sony drive, took the motor out of it, and tested
>it.
>It ran off an old transistor-only solarengine with an NEC 0.047 F cap in
>it pretty well.
>It draws less than 100mA no load at about 1-1.5V.
>These specs seem to be rather similar to a pager motor.
>And now I have two of them!!
>Unfortunately, I have no 1381s on hand, so I'm going down to radio shack
>to buy some flashing LEDs to try out Ben's FLED circuit on these lovely
>little motors.
>No idea who makes them.
>One of them has a little circle symbol on it that looks just like a
>Mercedes-Benz symbol, if anyone knows what that means.
>I also have two small solenoids now, if anyone wants to buy
>them(elmo?)...
>But I know very little about solenoids, so I can't tell if they're push,
>pull, or what.
>They have a rod that slides in loose and sticks out one end...
>
>
>jonathan
______________________________________________________
9106 Wed, 12 Jan 2000 16:39:04 -0500 [alt-beam] Re: BEAM VIDEO was Solar Powered Camera's George Rix > Theoreticaly, couldn't you could set up your Nvs and Nus in such a way
> that motion across the cameras vield of view would stimulate particular
> processes. the more uniform motion, the more it builds up, possibly
> forming a rudimentary motion follower? It'd require a lot of neurons,
> and maybe it just wouldn't work well or be feasible, but you have to
> admit, it's a rudimentary start. BEAM isn't going to be doing any major
> "processing" until we up the neuron count anyway! 4 Nvs are nice for
> walking gaits, but not for following motion. There are limits to small
> loops. Wee need more, and we need real networks. Maybe it is a lot
> harder, maybe it's more dificult to tune, but if it is made to work, the
> results are very rewarding! I may have to make an Nv expirimenters
> board. Problem is how annoying breadboarded Nv nets can often be.
Well, a good solution to that would be to buy a hundred or so of those
little single inverters (but the question IS: do they have schmitt
triggers?), and then attach your cap and resistor, and then arrange them
like that.
I've been drawing up designs for bots that are just neural and nervous nets
connected to a grid of LEDs (but it's not like Wilf's stuff, this was done
more to see what sort of patterns would develop with larger nervous nets),
but I never did anything about them because of the difficulty of getting
parts here. For instance, I ordered a hundred or so 0.22 uF caps over the
phone, and received that many 0.022 uF caps, which are now not very useful
unless I up the resistor values tenfold, and I don't have many 20 Meg ohm
resistors hanging around.
Anyhow, one of my paper designs was just to have four neurons arranged in a
tetrahedron.
Compared to a loop of four neurons, I'd expect that this thing would be
quite powerful. However, I'm fresh out of caps...
And then, I got to thinking about having thirteen neurons arranged in an
icosahedron (the thirteenth one is in the centre), which would give you TON=
S
of interconnections, and might prove EXTREMELY interesting.
But again, no caps.
Hmm.
> I have a big interest in Neural Nets, and I was studying them way back
> in high school. The real networks are ones that branch. They can do the
> decision and logic that simple loops can't realy touch. BEAM has
> potential, and low res "BEAM TV" is one heck of a start. I have
> extensive knowledge about computer, neural, and TV technology. It's fun
> combining them!!! I'll have to play around with this little toy! 64 LEDs
> though is sure plenty! I'll need to start digging them up! The timing
> for the Nvs would have to be timed properly too. I'll have to figure
> that out.
Yeah, well, I have plenty of LEDs, but none are of the same value...
> Remember, just cause it's not cost effective doesn't mean it shouldn't
> be done! Most new things aren't cost effective! They need time to
> develop and be understood well enough to do something.
Precisely. And guess what:
I have a job now, so caps are coming... =3D)
> I wonder if I can set up that old Neural Networks program on my Mac
> emulate BEAM Nvs and Nus. At least imitate them. I wish I knew a good
> Mac programer with an interest in BEAM. It'd be nice to have an BEAM
> emulator for expirimentation. Heck, I'd even settle for a PeeCee
> version! I could just emulate it! :)
Hey, Richard, I'm working on my programming skills, so call me in three or
four years =3D)
> Hopefuly, we'll see BEAM bots finaly chasing our cats (or dogs, or
> whatever you got) instead of the other way around! Hehe! :)
Actually, my cats are scared to death when I turn on Radon (he's my only
working BEAM bot: a non-solar photohead).
But then, they run for it when my guinea pig Murray sneezes.
Cats are hilarious =3D)
BTW, does anyone know where those single inverters can be found?
Dave: do you think Solarbotics might start stocking those... =3D)
Well, there's my rant for today, so I'm back to lurking...
Peace out!
Rob Rix
Don't take a walk, climb a tree =8B an ancient truism, invented last week.
Home