Hello,
I'm looking for a little direction for a project. The workflow is
pretty straight forward. I have a pneumatic cylinder with 2 hall effect
switches. The order of events need to be as follows.
1.)trigger cylinder to extend
2.)start timer with switch A
3.) stop timer with switch B
4.)pause ~10 sec & output time
5.)trigger cylinder to retract
6.) start timer with switch B
7.) stop timer with switch A
8.) output time
The interval between switch A&B will be 2-10 sec and I would like it to
be accurate to .01s or better. In its simplist form I could trigger the
cylinder manually and read the output off of a array of 7 seg displays.
Idealy I would like to beable to output them to a .txt file on a pc so
I can import them into excel to beable to graph the output.
Now onto my questions.
I think I can handle the simple approach with a 555>counter>7 seg
driver, but I haven't been able to find anything reguarding the
accuracy of this method.
I've also though of interfacing though the parallel port of a pc and
doing all the functions via software, but I've seen alot of concerns
over accuracy of the clock in pc.
The last approach I have come up with is to use something like this
http://www.ontrak.net/ADU200.htm and using the hall effect switches to
trigger a 555 timer connected to the counter inputs and the outputs to
control the cylinder. But this approch doesn't seem very elegant and
again the accuracy of the 555 comes into question.
I have conceptual knowledge of electronics but have not done any
designs from scratch so I am basically looking for direction and
suggestions on components. I also have limited visual basic & c++
experience but I am confident that with a little direction I can
accomplish this and hopefully learn enough to beable to do more complex
projects.
Thank You
Lewis
I'm looking for a little direction for a project. The workflow is
pretty straight forward. I have a pneumatic cylinder with 2 hall effect
switches. The order of events need to be as follows.
1.)trigger cylinder to extend
2.)start timer with switch A
3.) stop timer with switch B
4.)pause ~10 sec & output time
5.)trigger cylinder to retract
6.) start timer with switch B
7.) stop timer with switch A
8.) output time
The interval between switch A&B will be 2-10 sec and I would like it to
be accurate to .01s or better. In its simplist form I could trigger the
cylinder manually and read the output off of a array of 7 seg displays.
Idealy I would like to beable to output them to a .txt file on a pc so
I can import them into excel to beable to graph the output.
Now onto my questions.
I think I can handle the simple approach with a 555>counter>7 seg
driver, but I haven't been able to find anything reguarding the
accuracy of this method.
I've also though of interfacing though the parallel port of a pc and
doing all the functions via software, but I've seen alot of concerns
over accuracy of the clock in pc.
The last approach I have come up with is to use something like this
http://www.ontrak.net/ADU200.htm and using the hall effect switches to
trigger a 555 timer connected to the counter inputs and the outputs to
control the cylinder. But this approch doesn't seem very elegant and
again the accuracy of the 555 comes into question.
I have conceptual knowledge of electronics but have not done any
designs from scratch so I am basically looking for direction and
suggestions on components. I also have limited visual basic & c++
experience but I am confident that with a little direction I can
accomplish this and hopefully learn enough to beable to do more complex
projects.
Thank You
Lewis