PORTS Forum

Ports and Interfaces => Parallel Port => Topic started by: rodstar on June 03, 2012, 06:29:46 pm

Title: More than the typical 8 pins
Post by: rodstar on June 03, 2012, 06:29:46 pm
Hello,

Everyone knows you can generate pulses. For example to control stepper motor (drivers) to control a CNC router, you use a CAM software like Mach3, Kcam, and so on.

My goal is to control a robot arm. That means at least 6 motors. Each motor needs 2 pins (step+dir) so minimal I need 12 pins.

Finally my questions are the following:
q1.- If I add a PCI parallel port: Can Windows handle 2 or more parallel ports simoultaneously?
q2.- For precise fast speed pulsing: Is there any known plattform, DLL, IDE, interface or something to integrate with programming?

NOTE1: I want to control de robot arm in real time, for example1: with a Joystick; example2: an automated saved task...
NOTE2: I actually control (parallel) pins in Visual Basic 6 with no problems. But cannot generate synchronous pulsing for example 40kHz, nor variating frequencies simultaneously in different pins. I mean pin1 10kHz while pin3 accelerates from 100Hz to 967Hz, while pin5 logarithms down from 2kHz to 0 (depending on joystick control or automated script)

... take a breath...

Thanks, 4 ur time
Rodrigo.
Title: Re: More than the typical 8 pins
Post by: Jan Axelson on June 03, 2012, 09:48:50 pm
For fast real-time I/O, use USB to connect to a microcontroller or other processor that you program to handle the real-time communications. Use the PC to send commands to and receive data from the external processor.

Jan