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Mach 3 and Opto-22
« on: March 26, 2008, 12:34:54 AM »
I'm converting to Mach 3;  for misc I/O I'm using an Opto-22 break out board connected to the Opto-22 interface ISA card.  I see in the forums that others are using Opto-22... what is involved with making Opto-22 SSR's work with Mach 3.  Is there a plug in for intrinsic feature? Or is it just a configuration or obvious customization?
Thanks!
--Scott

Offline Jeff_Birt

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Re: Mach 3 and Opto-22
« Reply #1 on: March 26, 2008, 08:27:29 PM »
I'm using the extended I/O module on a Galil card to drive my Opto-22 racks. You could use any I/O device that is compatible with mach that provides a 5V signal though.
Happy machining , Jeff Birt
 
Re: Mach 3 and Opto-22
« Reply #2 on: March 27, 2008, 01:44:13 AM »
Thanks Jeff,  I'll check into the extented I/O for my Galil controller on my BP-300 VMC. 

In this instance I'm thinking about using Mach 3 on an old Shop Task 3-in-1 machine (stepper motors currently controlled by Ah-Ha card and S/W).  It also has an Opto-22 ISA card and break out board with SSRs to control mist and small rotary table.

On the OPTO22 site, I found what appears to be a fairly easy SDK, supports VB and C++ --  I think I'll end up writing a Mach 3 plugin for legacy Opto-22 PCI-AC5 (PCI bus) and AC5 (ISA bus) interfaces.  I've used the newer ethernet SDK a while back, it was pretty easy to use -- e.g. I'm hopeful this will be easy.

I'll post the plug-in as soon as I get it done, which probably be pretty soon because I'll need it really soon.
--Scott
--Scott

Offline Chaoticone

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Re: Mach 3 and Opto-22
« Reply #3 on: March 29, 2008, 10:25:26 PM »
Thanks Scott. Contributions like plug-ins are welcome for sure. Neat picture you have there. Did you make it? Care to tell us about it.

Brett
;D If you could see the things I have in my head, you would be laughing too. ;D

My guard dog is not what you need to worry about!
Re: Mach 3 and Opto-22
« Reply #4 on: March 30, 2008, 09:19:43 PM »
Thanks, I'll post the plug-in the new couple of weeks (or less).  It should be a simple matter of mapping the opto-22 I/O to the Mach 3 I/O.

The item in the picture is a telescope mount for a 6" Mead.  I can't take full credit for the scope mount.  I bought the bulk of it from VetCo Electronics Surplus in Bellevue WA (east of Seattle), paid about $150 for it.  It was a one-of-a-kind custom project built by "heaven knows who" (the folks at the store didn't known).  I would really like to meet the person who made it!  However, I made repairs and major modifications to "re-purpose" it.  The original machining was quite impressive and it was well constructed, I learned a lot by reverse engineering and improving it -- I've made three of these so far.

What's special about it is that it is a full equatorial motorized 2 axis mount, not a 1 axis motorized mount with a fixed latitude elevation.  You can simply take the scope anywhere, turn it on, the GPS tells it where it is on the planet etc, then you tell it a location to point at (coordinates or a celestial object name) using  a PDA or laptop and it will find the celestial object for you automatically and track it based on known movement of the object from the database. The scope was mounted to a standard 1 axis Mead base (from surplus) with a worm-gear & multi-speed motor drive with built in variable speed motor.  This had limitations that I managed to overcome with steppers, although vibration is a bit of an issue.  What is really cool is that given the really accurate data available these days I should be able to track all kinds of low orbit things like the International Space Station, satellites etc.  IFF I can get the steppers to turn the thing fast enough.  I've seen some articles in the various mags showing how to time when fast moving objects are overhead.

2) Longer-term: I want to developing an terrestrial object tracking system, to follow fast moving far away objects like model airplanes, birds, race cars, acrobatic sailplanes etc (I know what you are thinking -- let's keep it clean people!).  What is really neat is there's a tiny micro-chip you can get that provides a serial-to-LanC interface.  Most people don't know that LanC is the protocol to control  most video cameras.  So you just send commands through the serial interface and the video camera can start/stop/ff/rw/zoom-in/out etc.  You can use any uCPU (like a Basic Stamp) or laptop/PDA to drive this thing, and also drive the servos/steppers.  So hook up your video camera to the scope... you get the picture (sorry for the pun).  ;D

--Scott
--Scott

Offline Chaoticone

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Re: Mach 3 and Opto-22
« Reply #5 on: March 30, 2008, 09:43:44 PM »
Very, very interesting Scott. Keep us posted on this if you would. I'm sure others would I know I would love to see a video of it being set up and in action.

Brett
;D If you could see the things I have in my head, you would be laughing too. ;D

My guard dog is not what you need to worry about!
Re: Mach 3 and Opto-22
« Reply #6 on: September 11, 2011, 09:26:05 PM »
New to this site...

Has anyone done anything with adapting a Opto22 PCI AC5 system to mach as of yet.
Doing a retrofit and acquired the card and board and would like to see if I can put it to use...

Thanks
Rod
Re: Mach 3 and Opto-22
« Reply #7 on: March 12, 2014, 02:52:53 AM »
I'm "finally" getting around to it.  I did a fair bit of Opto22 programming a few years ago (it was ethernet, but that doesn't matter).  Unless I end up just wiring to the Galil DMC card…
--Scott