perm filename CART.DOC[0,BGB] blob
sn#071770 filedate 1973-11-13 generic text, type T, neo UTF8
00100 CART HARDWARE
00200
00300 The cart is animated by three sets of motors, one motor pans
00400 the camera, one motor steers the front wheels and four motors drive
00500 the cart. The four drive motors always operate in unison.
00600
00700 The motors are controlled by six relays. Three relays switch
00800 the power on and off, and three relays switch the polarity of the
00900 current. Accordingly the cart can be commanded to drive forwards or
01000 backwards, to steer left or right, and to pan its camera clockwise or
01100 counterclockwise.
01200
01300 The Relays in their turn are controled by flipflops. The
01400 power relays are controlled by three retriggerible one shot flipflops
01500 called the Action Bits. The polarity relays are controlled by three
01600 regular flipflops (type D flipflops) called the direction bits. The
01700 direction and actions bits may be set and cleared by radio commands.
01800 Naturely, Action bits being one shot delays, clear themselves after a
01900 tenth of a second, this is so the Cart won't go very far without
02000 specific orders from the computer.
02100
02200 The cart radio transmitter is located in the Kludge Bay and
02300 is connected to the PDP-6 via DACs numbered 51, 52, 53 and 54. The
02400 voltage output of the DACs varies from zero to ten volts depending on
02500 a ten bit number. The DAC voltages control the spacing of five pulses
02600 that are transmitted to the cart. A Pentrad of pulses is transmitted
02700 every 28 milliseconds, and the pulse spacing can be varied from about
02800 half a millesecond to 2.5 milliseconds.
02900
03000 The Cart has a Radio Receiver which is connected to some TTL
03100 logic. The logic interprets the pulse sequence as either a four bit
03200 command or as an error. The error condition occurs if there are too
03300 many or too few pulse or if a single space is too short or too wide.
03400 If there are no errors short spaces are read as zero bits and long
03500 spaces are read as one bits. If the 54-bit is a zero then the other
03600 three bits are strobed into their respective direction flipflops, and
03700 if the 54-bit is a one then the three data bits are strobed into the
03800 action flipflops.
00100 COMMAND LOGIC
00200
00300 The command logic contains thirteen bits of memory which is
00400 changed on clock pulses. The memory is in two for bit counters, a four
00500 bit shift register and and JK flipflop:
00600
00700 4-bit Command Data Shift Register
00800 4-bit Pulse Width Counter
00900 4-bit Pulse Serial Counter
01000 1-bit Error bit.
01100
01200 Input to the command logic is the Radio Pulse from the radio
01300 receiver interface and the clock pulses from the clock. Output from the
01400 command logic is the Action Bar Pulse, the Direction Pulse and three
01500 data bit levels Data-53, Data-52 and Data-51. All output goes to the
01600 Relay Register.
01700