They do sell the Rasberry Pi with a small touch screen.   But the cost is
higher.

The way to do a graphical interface now on a new project is to assume the
user already owns a phone of tablet and access that phone of tablet over
WiFi  As an example look how you'd set up a new IP security camera.  The
$100 camera has an internal web server and you log into the camera web page
and click on some web forms.   No reason not to set up a CNC tool the same
way.

The cost of computers has pretty much gone to nearly free.   Right now on
my desk is an ARM M3 board thais is about 0.6 by 2.0 inches that I bought
for $3.85 with free shipping.  (I can't see how they can ship it for $3.85
but that is what I pay for these)

This little ARM M3 will be a servo motor controller.  It will accept
commands for position,velocity over a serial I2C bus and then control an
H-bridge and PWM to drive a couple motors.  I'm also adding a status
display using  a tiny 1 inch LCD screen.   I can't ask for a o lower price
as $4 shipped is close enough to free that it does not matter.  I'm
building a digital motor controller and even this M3 is over kill

The Orange Pi is an order of magnitude more compute power for still a price
so close to free that it may as well be free.

Your entire concept for computer control of equipment changes when
computers cost $9 and are the size of a credit card or with the M0, four
computers fit on my thumb nail and cost a buck each.   You (as a designer)
no longer have to think of "The Computer" and you can start using computers
like they were Lego Blocks.    You start paling the computers INSIDE the
device that is being controlled.  inside the camera, inside the stepper
motor, indie the cable's d-shell inside the sensor and so on.  So now my
mid-level robot controls only has to tell the motor to "drive 1.4 metrer at
0.25 meter per second squared acceleration and all me when you are done".
 Same with a camera, I can ask it for "what's new" rather then just getting
a blast of real time image data.

Same for the main computer that does motion planning.  Rather then generate
one plan and test it and then another and another.   Given enough CPU cores
I can evaluate thousands of plans simultaneously


I wonder why they don't sell similar boards with small LCD touchscreens.
> There are 5" smartphones for $50, now I would like it without SIM and
> battery but with HDMI, LAN etc.

-- 

Chris Albertson
Redondo Beach, California
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most 
engaging tech sites, SlashDot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
_______________________________________________
Emc-users mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users

Reply via email to