On Sun, 2007-07-08 at 17:06 -0700, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > i hope someone here can help me. > > basically, me and my friend have a summer project. > > in this project, we need something that would basically function as a > blender. we know we'll need to buy a motor that spins, but what we're > having trouble with is figuring out how to program it. we want to be > able to control the speed of the motor. how would we accomplish this? > > i'm new to all of this, so i'm having a hard time wrapping my mind > around how it'd be possible to program one of those things :\ > > ex: what if i want the motor to turn for 10 seconds. stop for 5. then > turn the other direction. > > would you program it the same way you would on a personal computer > (via c, python, etc)?
The answers to your questions depend very much on what you're working with and how the motor is controlled. Is this supposed to be a self-contained machine, or is it supposed to be connected to a personal computer as a peripheral device? The easier way is the peripheral device. In that case, you need some way of sending signals e.g. from your computer's parallel or serial port to a relay switch or voltage controller that controls your motor. In that case, apart from the nitty gritty hardware to make the physical connections, it's a matter of controlling the parallel or serial port that the "robot" is attached to, which can definitely be done in Python. I won't go into details because you're not saying enough about your project constraints, and as fascinating as your question is, it is somewhat off-topic on this list (as if that's a deterrent to discussing something on this list ;-). As John said, you're more likely to receive useful advice on comp.robotics.misc. Good luck, -- Carsten Haese http://informixdb.sourceforge.net -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list