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Old 04-23-2021, 04:20 PM
dremu dremu is offline
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Default Re: 1:10 10x10 "HEMTT" (actually M1074 PLS w/ M1076 trailer)

Quote:
Originally Posted by frizzen View Post
I'm not suprised running the loading arm makes a lot more sence one direction, i've learned that my dragline crane is easier to explain and run from the Right side of machine.
Got industrious and replace the TX's two dials, which I'd been using to drive the lift and hook arms, with on-off-on momentary switches:

before



after



Now, the actuators are expecting a traditional servo-type signal, 1000...1500...2000uS, for positions from full-down to center to full-up and everywhere inbetween. This is why the dial worked so nicely, except when you're facing the wrong side. Then the dial turns to the left to make the thing rotate to the right and your head explodes

Since I already had an Arduino in there receiving iBus from the TX and running servos, it was just a matter of rewiring to insert the Arduino inbetween the TX and the actuators. Now, when you press the switch "up", it adds a little to the actuator position, and when you press it down, it subtracts a little. Had to do a little fiddling in the software to delay things ("debounce" the switch, so that it only listens to the switches every 10 milliseconds). Otherwise when you touch the switch, it adds like 500 to the actuator position and it's impossible to move accurately.

The other problem here is that we're changing from absolute position, where the dial says "Go to position 1000" (or 1500 or whatever), to relative position, where the switch just says "go up one" or "go down one." Up or down from what? I could have had the arms always start in the down position, which is reasonable, but then inspiration hit. The Arduino does have a bit of non-volatile storage (E2PROM), so the actuator positions can be saved there. Every time the switch says go up or down, the new position is stashed into the E2PROM. Then when the thing starts up again, it reads the last-saved value (making sure it's between 1000...2000 so we don't break anything) and uses that.

It's actually less complicated than it sounds, and is one of those places the Arduino shines. Changing behavior is now just a matter of changing the software. The switch delay and actuators travel limits are easy to change, upload the code, et voila.

Next up is to charge up a battery and get the PLS and the trailer and a coupla racks and make a good video of loading. It's painstaking 'cuz you load a rack from the ground onto the truck, pull up to the trailer and hook it up, move the rack from the truck to the trailer, unhook from the trailer, go to the second rack, and load that onto the truck. Whew.

Unloading is the reverse, whatever that is =))
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