[MunkeyEye]

Hey all, I've got a radioshack question for anyone who can help me...

I'm looking to build a device with an electric motor that's run off a standard 110v power supply. This motor can be made to move forward, stop, and move backwards on a rail. Now the tricky part... I want to be able to control this online using a web interface.

What sort of hardware do I need to be able to link the commands that are sent over the web to the motor? Also is there a web app that's available out there that can send such commands?

Any directions or ideas would be greatly appreciated! TIA!!

[Gamepro65]

now im not exactly sure on this, but if your just saying be able to send raw ftp commands to the device, then you might as well hook the device up to a computer, then have that computer run a ftp that lets you remotly send raw ftp data (which you can send raw data through flashfxp) but as to getting it from the ftp to the device i have no clue.

Now im probably off, far off idk im just takin a wild guess here.
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[Jfet Zener]

well the easiest computer interface is parallel port. you can turn individual lines on and off...and i think you can use up to 8 of them. serial port is cooler, but you have to have a chip to decode the serial stream. usb is similar, but need a more intricate chip, and the code isnt as easy to write. i can write you some code for either serial or parallel port really easy. web interface isnt hard to do either (well, ive done it on IIS, not sure about apache, but im sure its just as easy...i just dont know how to do it.

one thing you might have to worry about is to make sure the motor doesnt keep going forward on the rail and go off it. a servo will be the best idea, because you can control exactly how far it goes, and keep a state on the computer as to where the motor is exactly (i.e. 0-100 where 0 is all backwards, and 100 is all forwards). if you are looking for something like this, then i wouldnt recommend using just a normal motor. now if you are looking for it to do something like "keep going forward until further notice" then you could use just a simple motor. a servo will also require a controlling chip, but its pretty simple. if you want to give more info on the project, im sure i could help more.

[Warhammer]

The question isn't "how to do this with a web interface", it's how do "control" it in the first place. Web pages are just an interface to your motor controller. In the world of mechanical automation you usually have:

Device (motor)
Controller (i.e. a throttle in an engine)
Human-Machine Interface (the gas pedal)

So the HMI in a car is the pedal which you move with your feet. The only difference is that you want the HMI for your motor to be a web page - but it's only an interface between you and the controller itself.

As Jfet said, serial or parallel interfaces are the typical ways of interfacing PC's with other devices (such as a controller). The question becomes what kind of interfaces your motor's controller will take. Time to build some specifications!
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[MunkeyEye]

What I'm attempting to build here is this:

I've got a warehouse that spans about 400 ft and I want to attach a rail system on the ceiling that I can latch my CCTV camera onto so that it can traverse the length of the warehouse (like a cable car). The CCTV itself is a web-based PTZ (pan-tilt-zoom) unit but there are nooks and crannies within the warehouse that I'd like to be able to get access to.

Now the CCTV can be controlled online and is quite a sexy unit (you can see a demo at http://demo.ivcco.com) but it would be even sexier if I could expand it's useful range and make the entire unit mobile. The unit runs off a RJ45 cable that's connected to a router/switch and onto the server directly. This cable is in addition to a regular 110v power supply.

I'm hoping there's a device that can modulate the electric drive motor and that this device can be connected directly into the switch/router using an RJ45 cable and controlled using a web app. That way the online UI will be able to move the CCTV back and forth as well as control the PTZ features in one or more screens.

If this isn't possible, then what other options are there if I went the usb/serial/parallet port way?

Next week, How to Build a Flux Capacitor!!

[Simpleman]

Seems to me you might be able to hook something up with a joystick that would control it. Might look into that type of option . Some how using the game controler to control it or something of that sort.
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