Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Now that I have some experience...

I am rewriting the program that controls the mouth servos. The program I wrote would work for a basic outfit but I wanted a few additional features.

* The ability to test the servos. I am designing the outfit with very small servos that will be doing a lot of work. They will burn out/wear out. I want to create a test to drive all the servos in a way to check the range of motion and the speed so that I can easily identify servos that need replacing.

* Make it possible to get angry. I want a mode for the servos that involves the servos moving in a more synchronized, rapid movement to indicate anger. Similar to the test mode, I need the servos to perform a certain choreographed movements for that.

* Heartbeat monitor. This is a heartbeat in computer science terms. I want a regular pulse signal that I can tie to an LED to indicate that the board is functioning properly. This will aid in diagnosing problems. Just had a thought that multiple LEDs will allow me to show which mode board is in.

* Normal mode. This is what I did before. It is a series of random motions to each servo.

Also, I may decide to add an input signal to help with randomizing values but I don't think that will be necessary.

Finally, I also want to rewrite it to use the experience I've gained to write a much cleaner, easier to maintain program. Have I mentioned I'm having fun?


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