Board builders... anyone play with analog?

[Lilwolf]

Any of the board builders (encoders, whatever)... Any of you play with any analog -> digital stuff?  

Is it a doable thing on low volume stuff?

Why I'm asking is for the converstaions about building my own ultraviolet gun that wouldn't be a lightgun, but would have 3 (or 4 depending) sensers around the monitor.  

I was hoping to get a prototype system running at home using some industrial PLC's at the office to convert the analog -> digital.  Mainly because I already had the drivers (1) and I could get the hardware free (2).

trouble is, we don't have any with analog on them at the office... I thought we did, but I only use the digital for my clients.  So I looked around and found that analog control on PLC's are VERY VERY VERY expensive... (think 5k+ base, jumping up fast).... So we only play with them at customers locations...

So to continue... I'm hoping that there are some simple ways to do low precision analog -> digital conversions.  Any simple devices that handle this if we ever wanted to make them in mass (mass being 20 - 50 at a time...)?  

And next... Anyone with access to any or know any analog -> digital solutions that might be in the 50 - 100 range that can handle 3 - 4 inputs that I could use for a prototype system?  Something I could search ebay for?

Thanks!

(ps... I really really want true tracking on a gun!)

[grafixmonkey]

I'll look into IC solutions but I'm not sure I have datasheets for anything with analog signals in my room...   microcontrollers frequently have A/D ports, and are also capable of performing all the calculations for what point the gun is aiming at.

I bet you could find a way to use the joystick port axes for that too.  It'd just be dos or windows programming instead of mips microcontroller assembly.

If you're in for some serious wiring and an IC exists that does straight A->D, you could make a hardwired circuit that reads in three analog signals and puts out a digital x/y.  It'd be at least as much wiring as this project was though:   (picture)

That incidentally was the board that controlled the light targets for the light gun game I built.  Some wires have been ripped out and it's no longer functioning, but the top half of the board is a good indication of what the rest looked like.

[grafixmonkey]

I just thought of something.  Those multivibrator clock chips are voltage controlled.  So one of those coupled with a counter and a register is an analog -> digital circuit.

It's just like in the target board I built too.  Clock vibrates at rate controlled by voltage from sensor, second slower clock makes a counter count pulses from that chip at steady rate, number of pulses counted translates directly into a digital representation of the voltage the clock chip received.  Register updates its value from the counter every clock cycle when the counter stops, and the register is the digital output!

I feel like such a mad scientist now.  Now how could we hook this thing up to lightning strikes?    

[Lilwolf]

Sorry about starting a topic, then leaving on vacation!

That solution looks to complicated for a practical solution.  

I was hoping to find a canned solution for testing (1)...  But then to find out if there WAS a simple real solution that if we got at working well, something that could be sudo-mass produced (maybe 20 - 100) for a reasonable time/cost.... So that others could actually do it, or could be done by the people building boards.

I was hoping to use the simplest A/D one port per board to start with.  Why?  Ease maily...  Other reason is that then we might be able to swap it out later.  So no conversions or anything.  Take in an analog value and output some floating point or integer value out the other end.  

Then do everything else on the PC...  Either in a mame port, or finding out how to write a device driver...

There is one person on the web that might be of interest.  There is a guy who is producing USB controller boards for joysticks ect.  He has one that has works with ranges of pots.  I'm not sure if this would be a great base...  I really need to get my electronics books out....  

[grafixmonkey]

oh, that picture was of my light gun shooting game that you asked about before - it's not of an A/D solution!  Haha, that would really be nuts!

I wouldn't honestly consider using the crazy clock / counter / latch idea either, because it would be tricky to design and tough to troubleshoot, and I'm not sure the relationship between voltage and frequency is really linear in those things.  That and I'm sure there's a single-chip solution for something like that.

I still haven't had a chance to look though!  Go to http://www.ti.com/sc/docs/products/index.htm if you want to browse through integrated solutions yourself and see if you find anything...    They have a link to all their datasheets there, and a search.  I'll look more later!