NERP is Not Exclusively Raspberry Pi, the small computer and embedded systems interest group at Pumping Station:One in Chicago. NERP meets every other Monday at 7pm at Pumping Station:One, 3519 N. Elston Ave. in Chicago.
Tonight at NERP, Craig LeMoyne will introduce the new Raspberry Pi Model B+: the new and improved version of the highly successful Model B. We will have a side by side comparison with the Model B and highlight the changes.
Servo motors are computer controllable motors that do pretty much the same thing as stepping motors. From a systems perspective they have nothing else in common. Servos use feedback to adjust the motor’s position and velocity. The difference between the target speed (or position) and the measured speed (or position) is called error. Without error, the motor has no reason to move. The type of sensor usually used to detect a motor’s position is called a quadrature encoder. Although servo systems can give better performance than steppers in some situations, servos are more complex and more expensive than steppers. Part of the complexity is reading and making sense of the encoder. Adafruit has posted a video in which Drew Fustini has a good job of introducing some techniques for accessing the special eQEP quadrature decoder module in the BeagleBone Black.
https://www.adafruit.com/blog/2014/07/15/how-to-read-the-position-of-a-rotary-encoder-connected-to-a-beagleboneblack-txinstruments-beagleboardorg/
A PS1 member (me) has a project that aims to use the BBB’s eQEP to control an Etch-a-Sketch. Tonight I’ll show some of the technology that’s involved and progress on assembling the system.
Find NERP and Pumping Station:One at
and https://pumpingstationone.org/
Doors open at 6:30pm. The next meeting is July 21st, 2014. NERP is free and open to the public.
Ed Bennett ed @ kinetics and electronics com
Tags: electronics,embedded, NERP, Open Source, raspberry pi,hackerspace, BeagleBone, Element14, Pumping Station One
