No Computers Attached!!!

Ladyada has an Arduino shield that can play .wav files off of FAT16 formatted SD cards [www.adafruit.com]. I haven't looked through the project very much, but perhaps the audio hardware and .wav handling could be discarded and the FAT16 hardware and software bits could be used.

mimarob Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I get the following hex string over and over again:
> 54 sync
> 51 HDB2
> 31 HDB1
> 08 dst address Extruder (!!!)
> 00 src address PC
> 00 version command
> BA crc
>
> The strange thing is, dst address is the address
> for the extruder, still the circuit and Java
> program work when I connect only a Stepper board
> to the host.
>
> Any idea what is going on?

Looks like the test software is assuming there is an extruder and is asking that extruder what its version is. When it gets no reply it tries again.

Perhaps it is an error in the test program and it should be addressing one of the stepper controllers instead of the extruder. What is the test program you are running?

Good news for the No Computers Attached! lobby. Zach Hoeken (of RRRF fame) has developed an Arduino work-alike based on the larger ATmega644P chip. This provides four times the programming space, four times the RAM, and 12 more I/O pins than the Arduino Diecimila. The blood-red board is named the Sanguino:

[sanguino.cc]

I bet the additional pins could be used to drive an LCD screen, keyboard, and SD card reader.

Been inactive here for too long. Was reading this thread with interest. I also use Picaxes and ran across a thread about reading SD cards there.

They were talking about a uALFAT-TF board.(http://www.ghielectronics.com/products.php)

The uAlFat-TF is a small board that can read/write to a SD card. It will currently only use up to 1Gb but the board maker says they are working on the 2Gb version now.

BCJKiwi has a write up on using it with a PICAXE at [www.picaxeforum.co.uk]

If he can do it with a picaxe it should be easy with an arduino.

Arvin

Another small board that uses SPI to talk to an SD card:

[www.saelig.com]

This one doesn't need separate 3.3v and 5v supplies. "Wide supply voltage range from 3.6 Volts to 6.0 Volts. Operating current @23mA nominal when using a 5.0 Volts supply source."

So there are ready made solutions for reading a large ASCII file from micro-SD cards. Would take minimum coding.

Arvin

Sorry, new guy jumping in. I've done some monkeying with a Dell Axim X51v(was a fantastic PDA, now discontinued) and driving various hardware... Seems like it might be a decent solution; Large touch screen, SD and CF slots, Serial communication that can be used independantly of the USB sync... with a little work I made it the interface for a Make:Controller and had that drive some servo motors. I'll tool around and get the Stepper controls up.

The little thing has decent processing, and the Make:Controller has a pretty decent performance with steppers... I'm building a Mcwire bot, so who knows maybe that would make decent control hardware.

I'll let you know how it turns out.