Has anyone pulled a servo drive signal into a PC before?

[bpm]

Hi,
I would like to take the servo control outputs from my RC reciever and feed them into my PC.

I've noted the post about pulling the PPM signal from the RX in via my sound card and SmartPropoPlus, but I would like to work from the servo signal as some of my applications may include servos driven from a non RC source and it would be good to have a generic soultion.

Plus if I work with the servo signals I dont have to crack open the RX and snoop around for the ppm signal every time I want use a different one.

Any thoughts?

Cheers
Barry M

[arneansper]

Yep. I built small PIC based board that plugs into receiver (one wire for each channel), decodes the servo signals, encodes them into proprietary binary format that can survive the 44/48kHz audio track and can be decoded later by PC. I have interface for joystick (using PPJoy IIRC) and proprietary application. I can dig out the source code and schematics if you are interested.

Some data is here but is not updated with latest developments:

http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=423467

regards,
Arne

[Malc C]

Barry, why take them from the receiver, when you can get the PPM signals from the trainer port of most transmitters. This is how all the sim interfaces work

[bpm]

Thanks arneansper,
The Schematics and Source would be great, Ideally Id like to send the data via Rs232 to my pc / pda, if the PIC outputs bytes in TTL at appropriate baud then I think I already have an interface module to convert to RS232...

I assume the code is for the PIC? In which case I guess I'm going to need a programmer etc, but small steps!

I'm all set with the PPJoy interface, I've been messign with that for a while with the PPM parallell cable SmartPropPluss etc even writted an intermediate app to decouple the channels from my E-Sky 6 Chanel Tx for input to my sim.

Any help greatfully recieved, I'm fairly new to this but a quick study so please bare with me.

Cheers
Barry M

[vintage1]

I'm fairly new to this but a quick study so please bare with me.


Synchronized stripping? ;)

[bpm]

Synchronized stripping? ;)

Yes youve guessed it I'm and engineer!

[arneansper]

I attached the PIC code and PPJoy decoder code. I cannot find the schematics, it might be that it is in my work computer, I can check it on Tuesday.

regards,
Arne

[bpm]

Thanks Arne, will have a look.
Cheers
Barry M