> > The more I look at these plans and designs and online resources I keep
> > getting a mental image of a cooter from dukes of hazard building one,
> > with the soldering being done by Mr T.
>
> Excellent point. (I got a good laugh from this). ]
Thanks, I try to criticise with humour, makes people think about it
instead of going off in a torrent of abuse.........
> I suspect the reason these
> things don't yet look like Fisher-Price toys is the market isn't big enough.
> But give it time. Look at RC model aircraft. When I was a kid you had to
> build your own planes. It was a hobby.
Yes and look how much time and effort went into it and how good they
were, but thing was while all the planes were different , the building
blocks, IE servo's and radio gear were based on standard design thats
still being used to this day, simple building blocks, so simple, so
reliable, so trusted.
I see the cnc/pcb mill style item is going the same way just it seems
to be not very standard yet, more fluid, undecided, and for most of
it, old tech, very old tech.
Driving items off the printer port is, well, what we did with toy cars
on the end of cable off the back of 8 bit 1mhz machines 20 years ago,
how can we be proud of something that works that way now?
I cant believe that some hippy founded open source gnu licensed and
copy left up and sideways control structure is not around, even if its
based on something hpgl1 or LOGO it would be a standard that could be
interpreted by PIC chips / custom hardware freeing the PC up, lets
face it, no windows based PC likes to toggle its printer port bits.
Even if all it is say a 16 (hell 32) bit IO port on the end of a USB
cable, that could handle most of whats being done now and be more 'up
to date', say a 18f4550, it has PWM, IO, memory to remember where it
was last etc, store options and calibrations, and the rest of the
hardware, IE motor drive and motors, stays the same
That would be a nice simple minimal component system, would require no
expensive driver ICs etc, just H bridges for the motors etc
Sorry if I seem to be slamming all the CNC style hardware out there,
but it just seems so 'old' compared to say, a $40 printer, its like
comparing an old Chinese sky rocket to a nasa launch system.
I will get the buckets of water ready now.......
Lez