Allow me to Nerd out for a moment!

ivangrozny2010

Okay this starts out maybe a bit fanciful but after my first successful BOE bot mods (PING, Line follow, etc) I have been thinking about expanding into different areas for my next project.

I can't imagine anyone would be a fan of Warhammer 40K here or even know what that is, but for any fans out there this will sound familiar. Basically in this fantasy canon there are a group of 'tech priests' that essentially worship technology and seek to slowly do away with their biological elements, replacing them with machinery and the purity of non-emotion that it brings. They speak in audible binary 'machine code' which other tech priests and machines can then interpret as language. However I wont pretend I can actually read binary here, I am not that smart heh.

My project idea would be to create a set of simple commands based in binary that would give 1 a specific pitch sound and 0 a specific pitch, which could be combined in any stream to form binary words from the sounds. Example: 0100011 (beep-bop-beep-beep-beep-bop-bop) which would form a sound command like "Move forward until you reach X variable like barrier or X amount of wheel revolutions" then the bot with a sound receiver and parser would get the sound, parse it and return the action given.

Would something like the 'Say It Module' work for receiving long streams of sounds like this? Does this make any sense at all?

In a nutshell:

I would create a device/speaker that could emit the specific sound stream I specify and the bot listener would pick up the sound and access its set command structure to parse and carry out the command based on the sounds.

/nerd out

Thanks!
Ivan

Mike Green

Theoretically your idea would work, but the Say It Module wouldn't be a good way to make a receiver. Better would be to use a tone decoder like the LM567C (www.national.com/mpf/LM/LM567C.html#Overview). You could use two of these, one for each tone, and one I/O pin for each. You could use an LM556 dual timer to generate either or both tones. To avoid noises from activating the decoder, you could have your Stamp code require that the tone be present continually over a period of time (like 20ms). Basically, you'd have a loop where you'd increment a counter when the tone input is present and clear the counter when the counter is absent. If the counter goes over some value like 20, you've got a valid tone.

ivangrozny2010

Awesome, thanks for the reply!

So would the tone decoder LM567C work with just the BASIC stamp microproc and vanilla BOE bot platform you think? Or am I still too deep in Newb territory for this to be a viable project to start?

Do you think a proof of concept with basic sensors in the standard BOE bot platform is also possible at all to begin?

Thanks again, it helps me out a lot!

Mike Green

You could certainly hook up an LM567C and the surrounding parts needed using the little breadboard area on the BOE. You could probably fit two of them on the breadboard, but you'd not have room for anything else, particularly a little microphone pre-amplifier. You might be able to find a DIY kit on the web that you could use. You could also just use a larger breadboard. RadioShack sells some as well as Parallax. In the end, you'll have to make some kind of semipermanent board with the tone decoders and pre-amp (and maybe the microphone itself).

Nishi .

By the way, You braught back memories with the W40k talk, been a long time since I saw a Crimson Fist running through here.

ivangrozny2010

Mike: This is great advice, I will look into this and report back if I am able to produce results...thanks again!

Tao: The Emperor Protects [noparse]:)[/noparse]