[nylug-talk] Linux and small operating areas

[Ormund Williams]

On Wed, 2007-12-05 at 18:42 -0500, Gregg Levine wrote:
> Hello!
> Well it was chosen for someone to ask that very same question.
> 
> Not so long ago, I bought a book on Linux and robotics. Its purpose
> was to help me sort out how to apply the methods behind how Linux does
> its thing on computer hardware to the outside world, that is
> controlling other external logic. Part of that problem is that the
> ability to have Linux manage a robot, is still covered in scarce
> information. (There's not much out there!)
> 
> In this case it would be a deliberately chosen older release of
> Slackware Linux running on a laptop and managing this hardware via its
> parallel port.
> 
Here are a couple of links to check-out:
http://www.linuxcnc.org/ 
http://mat.sourceforge.net/ 

Can you give some more detailed info on you project? What kind of
hardware are you trying to control? solenoids, motors, lights...
Why are you using such an old kernel?  The ppdev module lets you control
the parallel port from user-space.  If you need "RealTime" control you
can get the RTLinux kernel (see linuxcnc link above) which will give you
reliable control of stepper motors or servo motors through the parallel
port.

<heresy>
Sometimes Linux isn't the right tool for the job, I use a GPL RTOS
called eCos and for really small projects on 8-bit'ers, AvrX.   
</heresy>

How complex is the robot you're building?
__
Ormund