Re: Lunar Lander Test Mode? Anyone?

From: <solarfox_at_texas.net>
Date: Sat Feb 20 1999 - 00:53:37 EST

On Wed, 17 Feb 1999 13:56:37 -0800, you wrote:

>> Clay, what kind of hack will be required to read the analog input
>> (thrust) on an asteroids board?
>>
>I've got two options I've been kicking around:
>
>1) add a modern 8-bit A/D to the daughterboard and let the user decide
>what they want to hook up to it. (I think I'll leave this as an option
>at purchase time-- probably a $5-10 option.)

>2) Use thrust and fire. My thought was to just use a little PIC or AVR
>to read those two buttons and present an 8-bit thrust value to the
>appropriate register. Fire is "thrust value up", Thrust is "thrust
>value down". "double-clicking" on Thrust instantly sets thrust to None,
>"double-clicking" on Fire instantly sets thrust to Max. Hyperspace is
>Abort. I think that would work OK, might need to have a little "count
>slow when button first pressed, count fast when button held down more
>than xxx mS" condition, but the AVR or PIC can handle that in it's
>sleep...

        Why not do both? The PIC16C73 has a built-in 8-bit A/D (with an
internal reference) that ought to work very nicely for this sort of thing,
and more than enough I/O lines for the task... then just make it a
jumper-selectable option on the board, to either use an analog 0-5V input
or the two-button scheme.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
"An Academic speculated whether a bather is beautiful if there is none
 in the forest to admire her. He hid in the bushes to find out, which
 vitiated his premise but made him happy.
 Moral: Empiricism is more fun than speculation." -- Sam Weber
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solarfox@DON'TMESSWITHtexas.net (Gary Akins jr.)
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Received on Fri Feb 19 23:51:56 1999

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