newbie - moving on

ok - I am new to robots. I have completed my first project (lighting up some led's and having an email buzzer (rather pointless as I had to turn the PC volume down to hear it)) - Anyway, I would now like to rig my Parallel port up to build a robot - I have some old CDROMs that I wish to control, but they need at least 9v (and should have 12v) to motor them - how can I do this when all I can get is 5v from ECP... - So, do I have to wire up some capacitors or something to build the voltage up? - I am lost but willing to learn, except a lot of the tutorials expect you to learn all electronics, and I need to learn as I go along - hope someone can point me in the right direction...

TIA - James

Reply to
James
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Do a google web search for parallel port relay, parallel port servo, parallel port transistor, and parallel port stepper to find much info.

Reply to
Si Ballenger

thanks very much...

Reply to
James

If you're talking about actually powering the motors off the LPT port, you can't. It will likley damage your computer as the LPT port can not supply that much current. If you are talking about using the LPT port to tell the motor what to do (but not actually provide the power source), then check out

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Look for the "L298 Motor Controller Kit". It takes digital (5v) signals and turns on/off a motor as well as what direction you want them to go. It can handle two DC motors up to 2A each (I would put a heat sink on though). Using an LPT port with this to just turn a motor on and off would be easy. If you want variable speed, you will need to use PWM. I would recommend doing this with an MCU and not directly with the LPT port. Use the LPT to talk to the MCU.

If you need info on sending and recieveing data from the LPT port,

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has a tutorial that I used a log time ago that worked fine.

-C

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Reply to
Hoss

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