Advice for a Museum Exhibit
ikrieg
Posts: 1
Hello,
I am a member of a team working on an interactive exhibit for a museum. We want to include an interactive diorama that will have various cardboard figures moving back and forth, along with speech describing what they are doing. We expect most movement to be by electrical motors, with the possible addition of one or two solenoids, and perhaps servos. To move to the right places, we would probably want to use a few limit switches. User control would probably consist of pushing one of perhaps 8 buttons.
Because this is not a very speed-intensive application, I was considering purchasing the plain BASIC Stamp 2 Module, along with some sort of board and power supply. For voice, the only option I found on Parallax's website was the Quadrovox QV306M4P (http://www.parallax.com/detail.asp?product_id=27967), which can probably store enough voice data, but which only offer 8 kHz playback.
I am a programmer, not an electrician; other members of my team are going to help with the electrical side of things, but I have not been in contact with them. However, this does mean that I have trouble evaluating boards and figuring out what a chip could actually do, let alone reading the schematics.
Here are some of my questions:
1. Does anybody think that I should use a different stamp than the BASIC Stamp 2?
2. What type of board should I use?
3. How can I tell how many motors I can control, and how much does this vary depending on the board that I use?
4. How can I tell how many inputs I can receive from limit switches and user buttons?
5. Is there an alternative to the QV306M4P which offers higher sound quality?
6. What type of motor control boards would make sense to buy?
Thanks very much,
Ian Krieg
Post Edited (ikrieg) : 1/24/2005 10:39:59 PM GMT
I am a member of a team working on an interactive exhibit for a museum. We want to include an interactive diorama that will have various cardboard figures moving back and forth, along with speech describing what they are doing. We expect most movement to be by electrical motors, with the possible addition of one or two solenoids, and perhaps servos. To move to the right places, we would probably want to use a few limit switches. User control would probably consist of pushing one of perhaps 8 buttons.
Because this is not a very speed-intensive application, I was considering purchasing the plain BASIC Stamp 2 Module, along with some sort of board and power supply. For voice, the only option I found on Parallax's website was the Quadrovox QV306M4P (http://www.parallax.com/detail.asp?product_id=27967), which can probably store enough voice data, but which only offer 8 kHz playback.
I am a programmer, not an electrician; other members of my team are going to help with the electrical side of things, but I have not been in contact with them. However, this does mean that I have trouble evaluating boards and figuring out what a chip could actually do, let alone reading the schematics.
Here are some of my questions:
1. Does anybody think that I should use a different stamp than the BASIC Stamp 2?
2. What type of board should I use?
3. How can I tell how many motors I can control, and how much does this vary depending on the board that I use?
4. How can I tell how many inputs I can receive from limit switches and user buttons?
5. Is there an alternative to the QV306M4P which offers higher sound quality?
6. What type of motor control boards would make sense to buy?
Thanks very much,
Ian Krieg
Post Edited (ikrieg) : 1/24/2005 10:39:59 PM GMT
Comments
1. The BS2 sounds like a good option, although you might need more than 1, depending on how many input/outputs you need. You can sync them to do things together, however.
2. You'll probably have to get a board much bigger than the BOE. I'd think about a bigger breadboard, if you want to use one. The BOE would be good for debugging/testing and single component tests, however.
3. This depends on what kind of motors you want to use. From the sound of it, you just want slow, geared-down, non-stepper motors. For these, you'll need 1 pin. If you want it to go in reverse, you'll need 2. The number you can control only depends on the pins available, not the board.
4. You have 16 input/output pins. They can be either. If you have 8 motors on 8 pins, that leaves 8 pins for inputs (like buttons).... 10 motors is 6 inputs, and so on.
5. Yes, there's probably lots of options, but I'm don't have a PN off the top of my head... I'll see if I can dig anything up.
6. That really depends on what motors you want to use. Do you have an idea of what type you want to use?
You might want to give us a little more info if you want concrete answers. How many motors do you want? And what kind of motors? How many inputs do you anticipate having?
Hope that helps...
Dave
You can however expand inputs and outputs:
Expanding outputs: http://www.parallax.com/dl/docs/books/sw/exp/sw23a.pdf
Expanding inputs: http://www.parallax.com/dl/docs/books/sw/exp/sw24a.pdf
Post Edited (Jonb) : 1/24/2005 11:21:38 PM GMT