Stabilization

bigbearchopper

I am new at the Propeller chip and just starting to read about how to program it. My main reason to switching to the Propeller chip from the Basic Stamp PX is I have an application where I have two motors that control a pointer that needs to be stabilization on a rolling vehicle. To give an idea of the size I am talking about the motors have 400 in/lb of torque and run through a 50 to 1 worm gear. The pointer has a camera on the end and I need to stabilize this pointer so the camera can be viewed while driving. I do not know 'specs' to say what the stabilization needs to be, but it needs to be fairly fine. So, can the Propeller chip handle such a task, and how big of task is it going to be to write the program?

Thank you for helping a beginner at this.

RinksCustoms

I think I understand what your getting at, and I can suggest to keep the main program sweet and short would be to use a digital helicopter gyro controlling a digital coreless servo, using a pwm signal from the prop for the cameras pointing. The gyro (on one axis) will stabalize the camera once calibrated corectly. Ex.- if you setup the gyro to stabalize the Y axis, then it should all but eliminate the verticle bumps from your viewpoint.

However if you have a 3 axis camera stability system in mind, would require a dynamic suspension system either mechanically or electronically. Electro-mechanical approach would probably require the camera be mounted to a 3-axis motorized arm or table using 3 stepper motors, a 3-axis accelerometer, and a bit of creative programming to dynamically stabalize the camera.

The mechanical route would involve some very careful selecting of suspension springs and also devising a way to dampen the springs so that your image is stable over bumps yet not over-dampened so that your image is still jumpy.

Still a bit fuzzy here with details, but nothin for nothin, any motor going throught a 50:1 gearbox is going to do little in the way of image stabalization. Perhaps you could get away with using a few brushless digital·servos used for hobby? Each of these feature a rating of 210 oz-in & 0.13 sec/60deg @ 6.0V. Stack two together or facing one another (one signal reversed) and you have 420oz-in & 0.13 sec/60deg with each servo weighing about 2oz.

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grasshopper

As far as i understand it the propeller can do anything. It is going to be up to the supporting hardware to do the work of the motors you mention.

bigbearchopper

Can someone direct me to some sample programs that may be a good direction to start with for the stabilization?

ANy more suggestions on type of gyro and accelerameter to use that would be of high enough quality for this?