Its a motorized fader, and I would love my Arduino to work with it. Is it possible? I want to be able get the current position of the fader, and send it back to my PC, and also be able to set its position from the PC.
Im not sure if any of this is possible with the Arduino, but I would ideally like a framework on the Arduino which means I simple send a command simalair to :
Fader1.lever = 50
and then the arduino knows that the first fader needs to be half way.
This thing only has one servo, correct? You shouldn't have any problems interfacing it with the arduino.
As fas as the code goes, I'm not going to be any help there (Check out the servo libs).
The Penny and Giles fader in the link does not appear to use the Pulse Position control used by the various hobby servo libraries. It has a motor and a sensing pot but does not appear to have any built in servo control support.
So interfacing to the arduino is a little more of a challenge but I would think it is certainly possible
You would be building a servo mechanism that determines the current position by reading the value of the control pot in the fader. This can be achieved in the arduino using the analog Read command. Your Fader1.lever = 50 statement would determine the difference between the desired and actual value and drive the motor until they were equal.
You would need to be able to drive the motors in each fader with 12 volts at up to a half amp. A google search on arduino and H-bridge or L293 should bring a number of examples.
A little more challenging is to select and implement the servo feedback control that prevents hunting or jitter. Perhaps someone here has seen some arduino code that would be suitable for this.
