question on hobby computer for direction control

Well, you have selected a pretty ambitious project. You might want to look at the line of processors called a PIC chip. See

as a start. The PIC comes in a variety of capabilities such as digital I/O, analog I/O, memory, speed, etc. I use a 16F627 PIC chip to read a Hall effect sensor on an engine and the PIC figures when to fire an electronic ignition. The software (programmed in the C language) has the smarts to know how much spark advance in needed for the measured RPM and fires the spark at the right time. The PIC runs at 4 Mhz and is fast enough to keep with all the necessary timing. On another application I run a regular Futaba servo directly from the PIC. They are pretty versatile little buggers. They are quite popular with the robotics community. Do a Google search on PIC and you will find a ton of ideas.

....and if you like life a little easier, and would prefer to program in BASIC or by flow chart, see the PICAXE range. They are cheap, the programming software is free, and there is a lot of info on the web and in print about interfacing sensors. Same chip line as recommened by Marlowe, but with an internal bootstrap to make life easy, especially by providing for in circuit programming - a great boon when experimenting or designing.

Also, I have found the below a good mob to deal with - fast service, helpful guys.

David

Marlowe wrote: