Arduino Rotary Table MEW 249

Hi Dave, many thanks for your suggestion, yep I've set the dip's for the motor. Certainly will try capacitor route and let you know the outcome. Hey the worst case is I'm 50p down and a little wiser. Cheers

Howi, dont see anybody moaning or complaining, understanding the basics yep I'll give you that but personally I'm here to try and rectify that and sure others are here to do the same. It's a real lucky person who can learn a thing without a bit of head scratching or frustration. You might be able to determine that Arduino is not the best solution personally, to date, I dont. So if you think wer'e missing something fill us in.

Hi, I have read the last few posts and to my mind, building the indexer from scratch, so to speak, has been a fun and interesting experience, I learn't a bit about Arduinos, I learn't a bit about programming and about stepper motors, drivers etc. It didn't work as expected, but with a little research on t'internet and some help from the good folks on this forum, it now works a treat and I can cut the gears for my Aermotor build. I would not have enjoyed the experience any where near as much had I just bought one. For those of us who are new to black magic, (ie the mysterious world of digital machinery) constructing such a device is educational and satisfying when it all falls into place and does as it should. Minor failures are part and parcel of our hobby, as, at the end of the day, hobby it is, and it can be as much or as little as we want it to be. So for those that shy away from electronics, have a go, you will be surprised, for those that don't, buy a ready made unit, or keep the brain cells excercised and carry on with indexing plates......

I've tweaked the thread title a bit as 95% of this thread is discussion and teh wrong part number is just the first handful of posts. Nothing deleted.

Neil

Well chaps, you've just denounced the entire hobby.

LBSC spent a lifetime designing, building and running model locomotives and now we find he should bought a bike instead. Those blokes on the forum doing up old bangers - clearly insane; they could buy a nice new car and go and watch TV. James Watt and steam, complete waste of time - the idiot should have bought a horse.

I do what I do with technology for lots of different reasons. One of them is enjoyment - surely that's justification enough.

Cheers,

Dave

I fully support making anything for the experience and pleasure of making it but sometimes it makes sense to take the easy route. As we have a workshop we can have a go at making most things and sometimes it can be an interesting diversion, but if we require a tool it often makes sense to buy one and get on with the main project, if we cannot afford the tool but can make it then this has to be the route to go even if it is a diversion from the main project. Everybody has their own reasons to make something, I had a suitable stepper motor and together with the Steve Ward components it soon turned into a shortish diversion that didn't use to much time and resulted in a useful tool to get on and make the things I actually want.

Mike

+1 for Silly Old Duffer. Doing something new out of my comfort zone keeps the grey matter going. If you just want say a 5"g loco the easiest and cheapest way is to buy one, don't mess with all those machine tools etc

Judging by some comments on here, I must have lost the plot somewhat. What electronic knowledge is required to plug a ready made display/keyboard shield into a ready made Arduino board?

With the Steve Ward design you can make the PCB, source your own components, program your own Pic chip, even make up your own keypad if you were so inclined, with a variety of other options.

I, for one , do not advocate going out and buying a ready made unit when I can make one, but some do (nothing wrong in that, if that is what you want!), but plugging ready made modules together, loading ready made software, is not to my mind, electronic construction.

The limitations of the Arduino solution are glaringly obvious when you compare to the other existing options.

I have no particular axe to grind with respect to the Arduino in fact the opposite, I have enjoyed playing around with the Arduino platform. BUT! It is not necessarily the BEST solution for everything.

Silly Old Duffer, well said. I went the Arduino route because it was from an article in a magazine, no other reason. I learned a lot along the way, and it works. I probably wont use it much, but hey ho !. IF I had needed it to make me lots of money, I would have just bought a Divisionmaster. I might even make one of the Steve Ward ones as well, just for something to do . I just enjoyed the project like a lot of other people.

On the other hand, why p*ss about making a model, just go and buy one because the fuhrer says so......

Can we have RS422, please? Some readers have very long gardens with workshops at the end

Neil

Here's some big news for the flat-earthers... captured during a recent Lunar eclipse:

"You don't want to do it like that" (Harry Enfield)

Mike

The elephants have wandered off .

RS422

Blimey that takes me back

Posted by John Stevenson on 06/03/2017 13:05:16:
Be better if you used Morse

Keep some contributors happy if you used Royal Mail, none of this electronics stuff.

A while ago John Stevenson suggested the controller would be easier to use from a keypad rather than nested menus. Unable to resist the challenge I immediately sat in my armchair.

If anyone would like to try it, this dropbox link will let you download such a beast. No proper instructions but there's a pdf that should help. It uses the same motor connections as Carl's article and also works with the DF-Robot shield, though the push-buttons aren't needed. The keypad is a cheap membrane type about £2 from ebay etc.

The control keys are laid out thus:

Here's the lash-up.

As well as eliminating the nested menus, I have built in more ratios (90:1, 60:1, 45:1, 15:1, 12:1, 3:1 and 1:1) and made it easier to add more. A new feature is that the indexer reports it's status back to an optionally connected PC, and it should be possible for the PC to control the indexer. (This remote control feature is untested.)

Not implemented (yet) is keypress repeat. Otherwise the code replicates the same motor control applied by the Gary Liming's program as described by Carl.

This is beta software offered "as is". It has only been tested moderately carefully. I would be grateful for any comments, bug reports, or criticisms. The display and keypad layouts are just as they occurred to me and no doubt could be improved. At the moment STOP/GO are on the same button: it may not appeal to everyone.

I'm sorry I didn't anticipate JS's requirement for the indexer to support Morse Code. (Typical computer user, always changing what they want.) I could add CW quite easily if anyone really wants it. It should be easy because someone else has already written an Arduino morse decoder.

Seriously though, Morse is sometimes used to signal audibly to the operator as part of a real man-machine interface. (Like SMS on mobile phones. And my old dishwasher did it. ) Not sure there's an application for that here though.

Just for fun and interest.

Cheers,

Dave

Dave,

This looks very interesting but one point and it's not morse

Two other common ratios are 40:1 which is most dividing head and 72:1 for a lot of the cheaper import tables.

It's peaked my interest and I 'may' have to send for an Arduino to have a play which after I have got back from a trip.

Many thanks Dave.