Intro

[Andrew Davie]

I posted a day or two back about Synchronisation using just a single hole on the disc - and the indirect driving of the motor using a voltage that is constant per revolution, but modified higher or lower by the sync circuit. I asked why this wouldn't work, and Klaas suggested I should try it. Well, realistically there's no way I'm going to design a circuit to do that, but I am handy programming things so I got to wondering how I'd tackle it.

Meanwhile, one of the students I was helping last year asked me to assist with programming the Arduino I'd given/loaned him. Well, why not replace the entire circuitry with an Arduino, I thought. Timing might be an issue, yes - not sure if the Arduino has reliable interrupts at this point, but it doesn't matter - I'm going to have a bit of fun learning how to drive a motor, detect IR sensor changes, and process audio with an Arduino. That's pretty much all I have to do to for a televisor anyway.

So, this "Arduino Televisor" build isn't necessarily a fully fledged televisor. Not yet, anyway. It's a bit of an exploration as to how to program the Arduino, what tools, where to get them, how well it can control a motor (PWM and constant voltage), how to do all the stuff that's required for a televisor. I'll be learning and posting in this forum as I find/learn stuff. Fortunately, there are a gazillion examples of doing stuff in Arduino, and they're dirt cheap (like $4 including shipping) if you're willing to go with the clones from China.

If I do it right, it's going to be plug-compatible with my existing stuff - that is, I can rip out the analogue circuits, wire everything into the Arduino-version, and it should work. So, that's the goal. I don't hold out a lot of hope for this happening quickly/ever, but now I've laid down the challenge.