I will provide this 0-5v signal via use of a MCP4725 DAC on the I2C bus. I understand that max voltage would be given by sending a value of 4096 to the DAC and the range is scaled in where 0-4096 = 0-Input Voltage.
Before I purchase the components I just wanted a sanity check that this should work. My background is Mech E and while I feel capable of coding and putting this setup together this is not my specialty.
Forum is basicaly intended for none commercial purposes, like for hobbyists, students etc.
Anyway.
Is it enough to measure the preasure to achieve syncronization? If the cylinders have a slightly different diameter, slightly different friction, they will not move 100% syncronized.
Wouldn't it give a better precision detecting the position of each cylinder and control the air preasure based on the position?
Understood. I hope it is appreciable that I am trying to expand my knowledge and this seemed like a good avenue to do that. i am a student relative to the knowledge base here. legitimately there are children who know more than I do about this.
The pressure in the cylinders is not what is being controlled. The pressure simply needs to change in correlation with the actuation of the cylinders.
With a 5 way valve and a SPST relay the actuation of the cylinders is simple to control.
non coded it is basically
write the relay pin hi
delay for interval
write the relay pin low
delay for interval
adding the pressure regulator on top of this you would obviously be sending the DAC a value for the pressure setpoints as well. per the regulator specs this is linear but I am guessing it will need tweaked slightly to hit the pressure points I am aiming for. ie if 2048 = 2.5v 4096 = 5v and the regulator band is 0-100 psi than 2048 written to the DAC should be about 50 psi.
If it is interesting to get commercial and professional support there is a section called "Gigs and Collaboration" where You can make commercial agreements.
Your project is different from all those Baby-trying-to-press-a button-questions.
Can You provide a drawing, pen and paper, to show the system? You tell about relays. They are rather slow, somewhere like 50 mS for switching. Then there is the time for the stuff fed by the relay to react. It sounds like a difficult "machine" to control in a smooth way. Oscillations are likely to take place.