I am a biochemist and I am trying to resurrect an old pump (shimadzu LC-6A) from 1980s in our lab and want to use arduino uno as a serial interface and connect it with the computer to control the flow rate of this pump. I am familiar with labview, and my plan is to write a labview VI which will vary the flowrate according to our experiment needs.
I have the pin outs for the remote controller of the pump, and essentially varying 0-10V across couple of pins will linearly vary the flowrate. I have multiple questions about how to go about doing it, and any guidance will be helpful since I dont know much about circuitry besides blinking LEDs and running DC motors with arduino.
my greatest doubts about this projects are:
how do I vary 0-10 V, (max 1.5A) with arduino uno? also I am guessing I'll need an external power source, and I'll be glad if someone can tell me how to attach that.
I read a lot online about what I am trying to do, and two things which came up was digital potentiometers and DAC chips. I dont know which one is better suited to my needs but any ideas are helpful.
Larry, that seems like a workable idea although doesnt look too elegant. I am just worried that calibrating such the positions of servo motor to that of conventional potentiometer to get the right voltage output, and then in turn working with the voltage/flow rate conversions might be too cumbersome. Do you know if anyone has previously tried doing that? I find a whole lot of info on controlling servo motors using potentiometers, but none to do it the other way around!
I might have to use this idea in the end if I cant find any other way to deal with this problem. On the surface my problem seems like common enough to be able to find something online; but in reality I am incredibly frustrated at lack of solutions for varying voltages through arduino which aren't PWM, and/or are higher than 0-5V.