Guest guest Posted February 11, 2006 Share Posted February 11, 2006 How do you go about controlling sevos with LOR? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted February 11, 2006 Share Posted February 11, 2006 jeff wrote: How do you go about controlling sevos with LOR?The CTB08D card is the only currently sold card that will control servos. Later this year we will be selling a IO card that will handle a large number of servos as well as other things.Check out the users guide for the CTB08D to see how to set them up. http://www.lightorama.com/Documents/CTB08D_UserGuide.pdf Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted February 13, 2006 Share Posted February 13, 2006 Dan,I think you had a Charlie Macarthy animated doll on display at PLUS 2005. How did you do that, and was the doll/puppet/animatronic commercially available or did you have to buy the parts and build it yourself?Thanks,T Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted February 13, 2006 Share Posted February 13, 2006 tabjraxa wrote: Dan,I think you had a Charlie Macarthy animated doll on display at PLUS 2005. How did you do that, and was the doll/puppet/animatronic commercially available or did you have to buy the parts and build it yourself?Hi,Charlie McCarthy was a Ventriloquist dummy which we modified with three servos. On servo for the eyes, one for the mouth and one to turn the head. The head has levers that to move the eyes and mouth and it was easy enough to just replace them with servos. At the time I was thinking of adding some animatronic figures (like Santa or Elves or Reindeer) that could be controlled by LOR but have not made progress on it. Actually we did not get much interest in it at PLUS.We used a MC-P card to control the servos. MC-P cards are no longer available but will be replaced with a better card later this year. I could have used 2 CTB08D cards to control Charlie and had the 16 light control channels available to control lights around him. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted February 13, 2006 Share Posted February 13, 2006 What is a servo?---Daniel L Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted February 13, 2006 Share Posted February 13, 2006 Dan,I've been thinking about some kind of animatronic face that would be weather proof ... maybe a santa face that could be in a wreath on the front door. But, this is only a dream because I know that I don't have the time to work out all the bugs.If there were some commercially available outdoor animatronics that could be used ... that would be cool. But so far I've only see the ones that move heads from side to side or some other basic movement. (Like what the put in malls for Christmas displays.)I thought about that Mounted Deer Head that was being sold over this past season ... do you think it could be easily modified/controlled by LOR?(Note: this is purely fantasy at this point ...)Thanks,Tom Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted February 13, 2006 Share Posted February 13, 2006 Daniel wrote: What is a servo?---Daniel LA servo is a small motor. Generally you see these in the controls of radio controled vehicles (plain, car, boat, ect.)I never thought of using servos to help animate some items. I have built a couple of airplanes so am familiar with using servos. Just a thought thou how would you control the direction the servo is spinning? Unlike a radio controler that has a left and right, would you have to use two channels to do this? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted February 13, 2006 Share Posted February 13, 2006 itsmejrv wrote: Daniel wrote: What is a servo?---Daniel LA servo is a small motor. Generally you see these in the controls of radio controled vehicles (plain, car, boat, ect.)I never thought of using servos to help animate some items. I have built a couple of airplanes so am familiar with using servos. Just a thought thou how would you control the direction the servo is spinning? Unlike a radio controler that has a left and right, would you have to use two channels to do this?The servos I'm familiar with use 1 channel for FWD and REV control. Its kinda like reversing polarity on a 3 phase motor to make it run another direction, the BIG difference is with servos you have a controller/card that sets all the acceleration and deceleration rates, FWD and REV, and some also have some sort of tracking like a pulse encoder or glass encoder to let the controller know which way the motor is running and also set stroke limits on the physical equipment the motor controls. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted February 13, 2006 Share Posted February 13, 2006 so how would you reverse the polarity to make it work. Your right I forgot that the have a control box that generally the servos and antanna plug into. But this would be eliminated I would think if your using LOR. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted February 13, 2006 Share Posted February 13, 2006 A servo is a gear motor that can rotate to the position you tell it to take. This motor does not rotate continuously like most motors. Rather you tell it to go CENTER, RIGHT, LEFT and you can tell it exactly how many degrees to the Right or Left to go.Servos have three wires: Usually RED, BLACK (and the third color is white, yellow... )...The Black is Ground, the Red is +5 to + 6VDC... The other wire is the signal wire that tells the servo what position to go to.You can put two servos on a CTB08D in addition to the 8 light circuits that it has. The servos become channels 9 and 10 on the controller. With a servo channel if you set the intensity to 50% the arm on the servo will go to the Center Position. If you set the intensity to 100% it goes all the way to the right, if you set it to 0% it goes all the way to the left (left and right are subjective)... You can use a fade from 0% to 100% and the arm will move smoothly from Left to Right. You can use shimmer and twinkle as well on a servo and get some neat effects. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted February 13, 2006 Share Posted February 13, 2006 tabjraxa wrote: Dan,I've been thinking about some kind of animatronic face that would be weather proof ... maybe a santa face that could be in a wreath on the front door. But, this is only a dream because I know that I don't have the time to work out all the bugs.If there were some commercially available outdoor animatronics that could be used ... that would be cool. But so far I've only see the ones that move heads from side to side or some other basic movement. (Like what the put in malls for Christmas displays.)I thought about that Mounted Deer Head that was being sold over this past season ... do you think it could be easily modified/controlled by LOR?commercial animatorics are generally expensive. I think that you may be able to hack into something like the talking deer head but I have never taken one apart and I am not sure what they use for motors. It would be cheaper to have a little gear motor with limits and reverse polarity to get it to change directions. If someone has taken one of them apart it would be nice to know what they use. I would guess it is the same as the singing Santas. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted February 13, 2006 Share Posted February 13, 2006 LightORama wrote: We used a MC-P card to control the servos. MC-P cards are no longer available but will be replaced with a better card later this year.Dan, the output voltage of a MC-P is enough to drive a servo? If so don't bother sgipping that CBT-08D card you promised two weeks ago, as I have several MP-Cs. So now it is on to animation!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted February 13, 2006 Share Posted February 13, 2006 So what brand of servos is everyone using? Futaba ect....... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted February 13, 2006 Share Posted February 13, 2006 There is some servo info here: http://www.scary-terry.com/ he shows how to use one to create a talking skull. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted February 13, 2006 Share Posted February 13, 2006 Bill Foley wrote: LightORama wrote: We used a MC-P card to control the servos. MC-P cards are no longer available but will be replaced with a better card later this year.Dan, the output voltage of a MC-P is enough to drive a servo? If so don't bother sgipping that CBT-08D card you promised two weeks ago, as I have several MP-Cs. So now it is on to animation!!!Bill...The MC-P cards that you have do not have firmware to support servos... (sorry!) Here is the deal with the MC-P owners.. There is good news and bad news. The bad news is that you are going to have to ship the MC-P cards to us (we will pay shipping)... We are going to but in new firmware. The good new is that we will be adding a bootloader so you can download new firmware in the future and you will be able to use upto 16 servos on a MCP.Please note that neither the MC-P nor the CTB08 have enough juice to actually power the servos. You will need to add a power supply of 5-6 volts DC to power the motors. The controller cards only supply the positioning signal ( white - yellow ) wire. There is a diagram at the end of this document:http://www.lightorama.com/Documents/CTB08D_UserGuide.pdf Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted February 14, 2006 Share Posted February 14, 2006 Thanks for explaining!--Daniel Litsmejrv wrote: Daniel wrote: What is a servo?---Daniel LA servo is a small motor. Generally you see these in the controls of radio controled vehicles (plain, car, boat, ect.)I never thought of using servos to help animate some items. I have built a couple of airplanes so am familiar with using servos. Just a thought thou how would you control the direction the servo is spinning? Unlike a radio controler that has a left and right, would you have to use two channels to do this? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted February 14, 2006 Share Posted February 14, 2006 WOW Dan, I think you are taking Light-O-Rama into a new area of computer controlled lights. What will you think of next? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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