Possibly the future in motion controllers?

[tronicgr]

Hi,

There are many technical difficulties completing this project and the main one is that optoisolation is needed for all signals towards the peripherals as the Arm microcontrollers works with 3.3v and almost all existing peripherals we use for motion simulators require 5v.

The AMC1280USB was built instead as it needs much less parts but it stills provides lots of MIPS that are enough for the job. The CortexM3 suffers from the bottleneck effect to communicate with external peripherals in real time. It a threaded multi-tasking microprocessor that its perfect for complex math and memory transfer operations (driving a graphics LCD for example).

Eventually I'll be using this in place of the AMC1280USB but there are many factors involved (construction cost, firmware protection, programming and design time needed).


Thanos

[telfel]

I was looking around for modern microcontroller solutions and couldn't help noticing all these new cheap Cortex M3 development boards arising.

They are totally different from AVR family but I could give it a try for an ultra fast motion controller with 4 or more axis. In the next link this one even has 3.2 inch touch LCD screen among other connectivity addons:

Open107V ARM Cortex-M3 USB STM32F107VCT6 MCU Development Board Kit

And a cheap programmer/debugging interface for it:
J-Link V8 ARM USB-JTAG Adapter Emulator - Black






So if anyone is open for donation for one of these please let me * It could really change everything we thought about motion simulator electronics.

Best Regards,
Thanos


EDIT: Here are some specifications of this microcontroller:

STM32F107VCT6: ARM Cortex-M3 32-bit RISC
- Operating frequency: 72MHz, 1.25 DMIPS/MHz
- I/Os: 80
- Memories: 256K Flash, 64K RAM
- Communication Interfaces: 3 x SPI, 3 x USART, 2 x UART, 2 x I2S, 2 x I2C, 1 x Ethernet MAC, 1 x USB OTG, 2 x CAN
- AD & DA converters: 2 x AD (12-bit, 1us, shares 16 channels); 2 x DA (12-bit)


How to donate for this development board:
If you like to donate for this purpose please go to my blog and click on the paypal donation button on the top right side of the page:
http://motionsim.blogspot.com/



I have no other way of placing donation button for it here as paypal requires special html code for link protection.
If donations for this development board doesn't reach its target within two months, I'll reverse all donations about it.
Keep in mind that donations are subject to 4.6% fees going to paypal for the service (for example: from $10 donation, I get only $9.54)
List of the participant names can be place here (unless instructed otherwise) along with the percent of collected funds toward target.

Thanks


Project donation target: $97

Donation amount so far: $150

List of donors:
- Terry F. (telfel)
- David L. (motiondave)
- Richard D. (riton)
- Jakub V. (mambo)
- Gilles C. (vicpopo)
- John T. (John)
- Mirco L. (yokoyoko)

The Open107v Motion Controller Project thread is now can be found here: http://www.x-sim.de/forum/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=359

So is this project now Dead in the Water?