Friday, May 19, 2006
Simkits rulez
I have just received an email from Simkits: "...your order have been shipped". Tears almost choke me as I write this: I only had to wait 49 days after ordering this and voilá: it has shipped! I don't even care if they included the free USB hub as promised or not (it is not stated in the confirmation email).
I also bought a few PIC16F88 the other day; maybe I will take some chances with I2C after all...
Although stepper motors would be a far more logical choice for instruments with an arbitrary number of turns (like heading indicator or altimeter), they are hard to get and even harder to replace. You can tear apart old printers or floppy drives, but you will have to determine the step/revolution for that specific motor, adjust firmware and/or gear set accordingly. And what happens if the motors breaks down? You will probably have a hard time to find a replacement and I'm pretty sure you won't be lucky to find a motor with the same voltage and same steps/revolution.... So modified servo seems to be the way to go (with the extra pain of position feedback).
I also bought a few PIC16F88 the other day; maybe I will take some chances with I2C after all...
Although stepper motors would be a far more logical choice for instruments with an arbitrary number of turns (like heading indicator or altimeter), they are hard to get and even harder to replace. You can tear apart old printers or floppy drives, but you will have to determine the step/revolution for that specific motor, adjust firmware and/or gear set accordingly. And what happens if the motors breaks down? You will probably have a hard time to find a replacement and I'm pretty sure you won't be lucky to find a motor with the same voltage and same steps/revolution.... So modified servo seems to be the way to go (with the extra pain of position feedback).
# posted by ltornyi @ 3:22 PM 
