I would like to coordinate the movement of a Lynx 6 robotic arm with a video running on a monitor. I'm still at step one, trying to determine the right hardware for the job.
1) OOPic card or Bascic Stamp and SSC12? 2) I'm thinking about using VB program to start the video file and robot program. Will this work and will it be reliable? 3) This probably is not a new application. Are there existing programs/projects I could start with?Thanks for your input,
Shelato
We need more info. What do you mean by coordinating with a video? What level of robotic arm control are you talking about? Controlling servos directly or just commanding positions to a separate servo controller?
The OOPIC is a nice board, but it executes BASIC code very slowly. It is very nice for rapid prototyping, though. The Basic Stamp is expensive and very limited - you can only do one thing at a time without support chips.
I started with an OOPIC about a year ago and moved on to programming PIC chips in the C language with the CCS C compiler. Programming PIC chips directly takes a somewhat large up-front investment in time and money, but boy does it pay off!
BRW
I'm very new to experimenting with homebrew robotics, but from a little electrical engineering background I can tell you that if you don't know anything about the Basic Stamp microcontroller line, they use integer math. I don't know how important this is to your goal. If you simply want it to read inputs, perform simple logic, wait a preset amount of time, and write some outputs, it's wonderful, especially with an onboard voltage regulator with which you can power a few external logic IC's.
- NR
Thanks Bennet,
What I would like to do is record a video, then play the video back while performing robotic arm motions that go along with the video. For example, a person on the video says "pick up a red m&m", and the arm picks up the red m&m. Then "pick up a green m&m" and the arm picks up a green m&m.
In it's simplest form, I would make the video, program the arm, and then run the two seperate programs at the right time. Ideally, there would be some hand shaking going on. VB program starts the video file and tells the arm to start a motion, then the arm provides a signal back saying the motion is complete. The VB program could then go to the next video sequence, so on and so forth.
In the first example I simply need to be able to start the program for the arm on command from the VB program. In the second example, I also need to send a signal back from the arm.
Could either or both of these be done with the OOPIC or Basic Stamp?
Thanks again,
Dwight
What you need to do is get the arm programmed to do all the things you want it to do. Then you video tape a person who knows the routine, telling the arm what to do just before the arm does it. Then you use a batch file to start the video and the arm control routine at the same time. Hollywood!
I think either an OOPIC or a BASIC Stamp could easily do the coordination as you describe it.
Aside from programming the arm motion, I think your biggest challenge will be the interface to the video player and arm controller.
BRW
Nah... DTMF tones at the start of the video. Audible if you don't care, or use one of the two stereo channels for your audio program, and the other to trigger the arm. You could even set it up so that, if it heard one tone, it rana pre-programed sequence. Other tones might accomlishs specific functions, such as raising the shoulder joint. If you wanted to get real fancy, you could use various lenghts or volumes of DTMF to get more specific with movements.
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