I have a project I am beginning to work on. I want to use a joystick (without a PC) to pan and tilt a 20 to 30 pound table . I figured I would use a gearing system for the motor to provide more torque and that I was shooting for rotatating the table 180 degrees in about 2 to 5 seconds.
I know that an oscillator (555) circuit could be used to send signals to the stepper drive, but all of the designs I have seen that use this circuit use a potentiometer to set the speed of the motor and then use switches to turn the rotation on or off. That's not what I want.
What I want is to be able to use a standard joystick (with pots) to change the speed and direction of the table's rotation. Move the joystick a little and the speed is low, move it farther and the speed increases proportionally.
I searched for DAYS on google and the best thing I found so far was here:
http://www.imshome.com/osc.html
This seems like it would do the trick, of course not real cheap either
Anybody have any better ideas / suggestions for accomplishing this ?
And on a side note, using bipolar motors for the 20+ pound table what would you recommend for sizing the stepper motors ? ... besides bigger is better
Thanks,
Matt