Help with wireless stepper motor and LCD project

[clobdell]

Hey everyone, here's my situation...

So right now I have a handset controller consisting of two differential output encoders, 8 momentary pushbutton switches, a 24vdc-5vdc converter, and an LCD. RS-232 from a DMC-21x3 controller is wired directly to the LCD and the encoders and switches are wired directly to an AMP-20440, which is an inter-connectable card for the DMC-21x3 capable of managing brush type servo motors. On top of that, an additional mountable chip called the SDM-20242 is being used to drive multiple stepper motors.

If you are not familiar with the DMC-21x3, it is a econo controller sold by Galil. Here is a link to its product description...

http://www.galilmc.com/products/dmc-21x3-accessories.php

So my goal is to make this entire system wireless. I have been currently messing around with a couple of FreeWave's MM2-T radios just to send serial from my computer to the LCD but haven't made much progress yet. I'm not even sure how I am going to make the switches and encoders wireless yet.

Well hopefully all of this makes a little bit of sense. Does it seem like I am at least on the right track or should I scrap the radios and try Bluetooth instead?
Any advice for this project would be much appreciated!!

Thanks!
-Christian

 

[poor mystic]

Hi Christian
perhaps you could radically rephrase the question, and say how many channels at what bandwidth you need to work in each direction. I think it'd also be a help to know what distances are involved and since I'm thinking like a communications guy how much electrical noise is there in the environment the link will be used in, please.

 

[clobdell]

Sorry about that poor mystic, this post was definitely poorly written. Well the MM2-T radios I am using now operate in a frequency ranging from 902 to 928 MHz. Yesterday I was finally able to get them to connect. Using a basic comm port monitor program I was also able to send text through the radios to the LCD. Note that I was working in a lab full of running electronics so these radios definitely seem to be reliable when operating in a noisy environment. I was also able to get up to 50 yards away (before I ran out of room) and everything still worked fine, which is more than satisfactory for this project.

So to answer my own question I am probably going to stick with these two radios for now being that I have finally started to make some progress with them.

The only problem is that the transmitting radio and CPU are connected via RS-232 as well as the receiving radio and LCD. Thus I am only transmitting and receiving a single serial data stream between the radios each way. This is fine when only driving an LCD but I've got many more variables to worry about. I need to be able to monitor 8 inputs as well as the outputs of a couple of differential encoders.

So my guess is I'm going to have to implement a micro-controller of some kind capable of converting all of the discrete inputs into one data stream which can be transmitted through the network and then decoded on the other side.

As you may of already guessed I am very new at this so thank you for all of your help!!

 

[poor mystic]

Thanks for that Christian!
looking at the specifications of your radio gear I can't think how you'd ever improve on it anyway considering it seems to be at the very top of the commercial range.
So it only remains to wish you success in implementing your multiplexers and with your project overall.
Mark