Micro controller help

[BATS]

I remember a thread here before that mentioned this controller was valued by a bunch of the droid builders as being a great thing at a great price. They use it to completely control R2 and all of his movements, options, addons, etc.

http://www.makingthings.com/

I also found this one which supposedly does some nice things as well.

http://www.arduino.cc/

I was using one of these but they are 400.00 after you ad the network card. http://www.tri-plc.com/t100md.htm, that one uses ladder logic to
control the channels. I like it but the price is a rip off when the parts are
only about 50.00 in total.

I would like to know how these others stack up and if the prop'rs here
have some good experience with the other two or any others for that matter that I should be looking into. I'm looking for a controller that's not to complicated in programing and that has some great abilities to
plug in and control servo's, steppers, actuators, etc.

Any help is appreciated.

 

[Too_Many_Cars]

SplatCo in Australia has a very simple, cheap PLC which can run 12 channels. $100 with the programming cable and CD, or $80 where you need to do some of your own soldering to make something to hook up to your computer.

http://www.splatco.com/cc16p1.htm

Herbie runs one of these with an automotive relay output on 9 of the channels and inputs on 3 of them. The remote is another cheap thing that sends one command at a time, designed for home automation like turning on lights, etc.


http://www.lightobject.com/PID-Dual-Temperature-Controller-P45.aspx

Youtube video of the car doing some tricks.

For a few James Bond projects I have lined up which don't need a rugged industrial PLC I'm working on the massive learning curve involved with the $20 AVR butterfly kit from Atmel:

http://search.digikey.com/scripts/DkSearch/dksus.dll?lang=en&site=US&WT.z_homepage_link=hp_go_button&KeyWords=AVR+butterfly&x=0&y=0

This also can do quite a bit but it's a professional controller for OEM applications and is not plug and play by any stretch of the imagination. But you can blink a bunch of lights real good if you're a good programmer. We'll see how well I fare with it.

--Brian

 

[Too_Many_Cars]

One more source...

http://www.parallax.com/ProductInfo/tabid/110/Default.aspx

The Basic Stamp can be ordered with a few industrial boards. These things are basically bulletproof, I used them to build little robots for some engineering classes college. Lots of add-ons, options, and a community of newbie robotics people for support.

Good luck!

--Brian

 

[BATS]

Thanks Brian. I'm going to look into each one.

I need something that allows for CAT5 networking so I can
make the controller accessible and reprogrammable from a distance
since what I need these for is an automation system that I use to control
some really high tech bio technology.

LOL

This is where prop making and my real life cross over.

I spent a couple hours on the droid builders site and managed to find out
that they seem to like the arduino controller for most of their uses.

Since I am needed to control relays, switchs and a few sensors, its a little bit like having a droid program because you have both imput and response commands that your playing with.

Just finding one with a language that isn't a pain in the but and with options that allow for maximum options is the tuff part.

PLC's for those that don't know usually cost hundreds to get anything decent out of them, GE FANUC and a few others do a nice job and that TRI PLC was great but the cost just chokes you out.

I hope one of these others are what I can switch to.

Thanks alot for your help.

 

[bit]

<opinion >

If you're looking to learn about general purpose micro controllers, it's really hard to beat working with Arduinos.

They're inexpensive, amazingly well documented, and very easy to get started with. The community support is strong as well.

It's not an "out of the box" solution, but its among the best learning experience possible for beginners.

<\opinion >

 

[nomuse]

Heh. Not to get into platform wars, but another vote for Arduino.

There are arguments for all the different platforms out there. Natch. Boards like the Make Controller have advantage of including motor drivers, standard sensor headers, and stuff like that; with most Basic Stamp and Arduino clones, your CPU is one chip and you need to add a daughterboard (or motherboard) to fit the rest of the parts. Every project is different and it would be silly to say one platform is best for all of them.

Why I say Arduino for you is several reasons:

1) ease of entry. The standard board is programmed over USB by a small-footprint, free, multi-platform IDE. You don't need an ISP or programmer or burner or even a special cable, you don't have to compile the toolchain, you don't have to sign anything. Download one piece of software that runs on practically anything, plug in a standard USB cable, and start writing code into the pop-up window.

2) C. The Arduino IDE is a wrapper/GUI around avr-gcc, meaning basically you are writing bog-standard C in a shell with a bunch of convenient macros. And at any point you can drop down to straight C...even dump the IDE and compile it yourself.

3) Gateway to the AVR. I said I didn't want to get into platform wars, but the AVR runs on compiled machine code (it isn't run-time compiled), and is an optimized RISC chip where almost all opcodes run in a single clock cycle. The flagship Arduino tarts the chip up with a 3 x 4" board full of FTDI (well, these days USB is done internally), external clock crystal, regulator, etc., but you can run the same code on a naked AVR with nothing connected to it but a battery. And that's what makes the huge library of "Arduino compatibles" work.

So, yeah, for daughterboard stuff, the Arduino paradigm is a "shield" of the same footprint that sits on top, and stacks like a Dagwood sandwich. There are existing shields for motor controllers, and ones for ethernet.


However. Since you are looking at updating code via cat5, and you seem comfortable around computing in general, I think you might want to skip the introduction-to-micros stuff and instead look into using a Raspberry Pi for your project.

Raspberry Pi is an embedded micro running Linux. So you have the advantages of small footprint, ability to hardwire peripherals right to the board, but it is a full Linux machine and can be easily operated over ethernet, via a web page, whatever.

 

[majenko]

Personally I am a big fan of the PIC microcontrollers. Not as accessible or easy to get into as the Arduino, but the choice of chips and their abilities is definitely worth it.

But, for a beginner, the Arduino is best. (I class the Arduino as a toy, however, and seldom do anything serious with it - it's great for tinkering, but lacking in resources for my taste, and I have no need for the extra bulk that comes with it).