I have been a little occupied with work projects but finally got myself a cheap pentium PC that I will load with Ubunto and hopefully I can start going over the code. ('bout time I started contributing a bit more).

At the moment one of my work projects is re-designing the robotic control box. I'm trying to use a Playstation Analog Controller as the input.

Cool :-)

Tear it apart, I like criticism :-)

Gotta love cheap linux based dev machines

Well my coding PC is not doing too well at the moment. Bad hard-drive, 4Gb but most of it has failed and is almost full just with Ubuntu on there and a few FreeEMS files.

Here's a quick pic of what's been keeping me busy at work.


This is the DEMO-version of a new control box using a PSX controller (12 buttons, arrow keys and 2 analog joysticks).
Have been creating a new menu from scratch, hour meter function, invert-selection on joysticks...
using the Arduino has saved some work in coding, it already has a library for EEPROM, LCD, PSX-Analog controller.

I also spotted a library for capacitive touch sensing the other day. That got me to thinking about capacitive fuel level sensing, or maybe fuel composition sensor?(petrol/ethanol). If the code could be ported to a PIC it would be good (much faster ADC).

Excuse my ignorance - what does the box actually control?

It is a control box for tractor/cutter robots which drive down pipes (eg. stormwater, sewer) with a camera attached to carry out inspections or repair work on the pipelines. It is cheaper & more convenient than having to dig up a whole street to repair damage as it can all be done from manhole access points.

Some of their functions are:
- forward/reverse motor,
- some have steering,
- rotate a cutting tool,
- raise/lower a cutting tool,
- tilt the camera,
- rotate the camera,
- adjust focus,
- increase/decrease internal & external lights.

The current control box has digital joysticks which make it very hard to cut round holes, has an excessive amount of internal wiring and uses transistors to control the outputs which require a big heatsink & fans.

Wow, cool. Bet the psx controller is a big improvement then!

The PSX controller should be a big improvement. It only has 2 power wires and 4 signal wires. The only thing I changed was the connector to a Db9.

The current control box has over 40 wires (many the same colour), more current and each digital joystick cost more than double the PSX controller. Then there's the hours spent wiring it up...
Here's a photo of the back and don't ask me about trouble shooting it,