Hello, I have an idea to control a hydraulic system with software. Now I would like some suggestions for hardware and software. Sorry for my bad english, but I barely know what these things mean in swedish yet. I have never done anything like this before.
This is what I have: A device that can be moved up and down with a lever that affects a hydraulic valve. There is a marker on the moving device. This marker moves along a fixed scale, so that the height of the device can be read. The lever can be pulled in 2 directions, to move the device up and down respectively. I often have to adjust the device to certain heights. That is a tedious task, because the scale is not so easy to read, and it is not easy to get good precision with the lever. What I want: I want to set the height numerically and have a program that adjusts the device to that height. All equipment that is attached to the device must resist vibrations, and preferrably also dust, sunlight and rain. The precision should be 1 mm and the measurement range something like 0 m to 1 m My idea: A sensor that senses the height, a computer controlled hydraulic valve and a program. I have found a sensor at http://www.parallax.com/dl/docs/prod/acc/PingDocs.pdf and I think I can do the necessary programming. I would like to connect this to a laptop with Gentoo, which has USB, IEEE1394, pccard and ethernet available. The cable may have to be 10 m long to keep the laptop away from the unfriendly environment. If you have done anything like this before, or know where I can find more information or know about some more specialized mailing list, I would appreciate your suggestions. -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
