Fanless computer
2003-01-24 17:29:40+01 by Dan Lyke 0 comments
I need a motion controller for our rig. We're going fairly well with the S-100SMC stepper driver from StepperControl.com, but we still need some computing power to track position. After looking at budget trade-offs, development costs versus number of units we plan to ship, we've decided that it might actually be cheaper to go with a small PC than an embedded microcontroller. iDot sells a number of VIA Eden based products, including the VIA EPIA 5000, Eden 533MHz Fanless M/B for $100 and the VIA EPIA EM 6000, 600MHz Fanless M/B for $149. Add just a little bit of RAM, use the mouse port for position feedback, and set up Ethernet for control (because it only has one serial port... sigh), and this'll be way too much power to do what we want.
But it would also make a really sweet Ogg Vorbis player, and with a cheap NTSC LCD monitor and some TIP120 transistors hanging off the parallel port to augment the stepper control for the turntable on the serial port might make a heck of a model railroad throttle.