Robotics - servo control

[yoda]

not sure if anyone will know...

I want to put a computer in my radio control plane. The computer will be microprocessor based (a z80 compatable to be exact).

What i'm after is a way to convert the digital output from CPU to PWM for a servo.

The ideal solution would be a single chip that accepts 8bit (1 byte giving 256 servo positions) input from the processor ( TTL via octal latches) and converts that for a servo...

I've been searching for the last 5 hours and returned nothing but stuff for PIC's... While yes PIC's can drive them directly, PIC's can't do the navigation maths I intend so easily...

ANY help appreciated...
Thanks

 

[iamTakeo]

sorry, you know way more about this stuff than me. was just going to ask, when should we expect your robot to take over the world? I'll start digging my bunker.

 

[yoda]

PMSL...
The navigation is via GPS input, hence the maths required... nothing that pythagerous (<Spell) can't sort out...

 

[NickK]

not sure if anyone will know...

I want to put a computer in my radio control plane. The computer will be microprocessor based (a z80 compatable to be exact).

What i'm after is a way to convert the digital output from CPU to PWM for a servo.

The ideal solution would be a single chip that accepts 8bit (1 byte giving 256 servo positions) input from the processor ( TTL via octal latches) and converts that for a servo...

I've been searching for the last 5 hours and returned nothing but stuff for PIC's... While yes PIC's can drive them directly, PIC's can't do the navigation maths I intend so easily...

ANY help appreciated...
Thanks

Perhaps you should look at Blackfin as a basis for UAV.

www.surveyor.com is a good example. There quite a bit of activity on the forums about this.

My SRV1 stereo

Products already exist todo this but are expensive.

 

[yoda]

SRV1 system looks nice, that GPS board looks the dogs watsits... shame about the cost though...
Also the b/g wifi module is nice, except their is going to be massive over heads to generate the wifi stacks. However, my guy's are going to be self aware and use a sort of swarm logic as in they tell each other their gps XYZ positions at regular intervals in order to avoid colisions.

Not seen anything on servo control though...
I know about 4 / 5 years ago their were single chips avaliable but finding them....

 

[Chaos]

Dont know if it will be any use but I've read of a lot of people doing robotics with the Parallax Propellor Chip, http://www.parallax.com/
They also sell servos you can control with a basic stamp.

If you ask in there forums im sure someone could advise you.

 

[yoda]

I've found a solution...
I've looked at the PIC servo controlers in more detail and found one that can have ether 4 digital outputs and 4 servos or 8 servos... and the best thing is using the program it accepts commands from an rs232 connection...

This means that instead of having one IO line per servo (4 in total) i can just have one IO line to drive an RS232 UART... and this also saves on space, reduces cost... I'm starting to like this idea...