|
Jon,
I haven't yet finalized my control set up, however left/right for the
centerline motor is controlled by foot pedals (electric) and most
everything else is on a controller at the front of the left armrest.
The feet might get one additional task since they really aren't doing very
much. The objective is to keep the right hand free for a myriad of other
tasks: ballast controls, radios, camera, notepad, display management,
scratching, etc.
Jim
In a message dated 4/4/2012 1:48:27 A.M. Central Daylight Time,
jonw@psubs.org writes:
I
found a photo that pretty that much looks like what I want to create
in
terms of a remote motor controller and sensor display. The photo
labeled controller-1 was designed for a robot and so had four
thumb-joysticks and many more switches than would be necessary for a
submarine.
I will be looking to use two joysticks, one on the left
for up/down, one
on the right for forward/reverse/left/right. They
will both be two axis
joysticks even though only one axis is necessary for
the up/down
thrusters. The photo marked joystick-1 is what I have
selected to start
off with. The thumb-joysticks shown in the robot
controller are cheap,
and work, but they don't appear to have the
resolution that I think I
want for the thrusters based upon what I've seen
in various youtube
videos of other projects. It's not clear to me
that the joysticks I
have selected have adequate resolution either, but
they appear to be
better than the thumb-joysticks and at only $25 (us)
each I'm willing to
take a chance on them. Industrial joysticks look
like they cost
anywhere between $600-$1000.
For the display, I'll
be using a 20x4 Red LCD (4 lines of 20 characters
each) and will cycle
through various menus since not all the sensor
information will fit on
four lines. Currently planning on depth,
vertical-rate, water
pressure, cabin pressure, water temp, cabin temp,
and also thinking about
having a data logger to save all the sensor
information during the
dive.
I was going to also include a luminosity sensor (thanks Jens for
the
ebay pointer) but the cheap LDR's are apparently not very consistent
so
I'm going to wait on it and add one later.
Still looking for a
50amp motor controller that can handle 36vdc before
I seek out Alec's
friend to design one. I'm not quite sure what the
barrier is but I
notice most reasonably priced motor controllers that
handle large current
seem to have a limit of
30vdc.
Jon
|