Re: Black box

First, maybe we ought to use slightly less offensive terms than 'smart'
and 'dumb', although I do agree they are a good description. Hope no one
gets upset by being know as a smart or dumb advocate :-)

I am on the smart box side. If we can get one good implementation of the
'messy motion stuff' in the box, then it wont have to be re-wriiten a
thousand times by everyone else. If Kerr can do it AND the servo drive
and sell the whole thing for under $200, then the signal piece alone
should eaisly be about $100.

Will one of you dumb guys please explain how I would program the timer
generator boards? As far as I have been able to understand the hardware
can be set to generate a pulse train of some frequency, over a very
wide range. Ok, but to drive a step motor the number of pulses is more
important that the frequency. How do I control these timers to get pulse
count?

If I have to send commands to change the rate to handle the rampup, then
the PC is still in a time critical loop, and I dont see how this
hardware has helped much.

Someone plese explain the programming from the start point that I know I
want to make a move and I have a count of X and Y values to move. On the
smart box all Id do is output a string like "move xxx yyy" and it would
happen

ron ginger