Spectrum Computing

I haven't posted in a long while around here, but it was for several good reasons ... and one of them is in this post



There is a riddle on the robot stand table.
Let's see, who can solve it.

I probably was not very clear, on what this actually is.

This is a Spectrum 48K (in this case a plus, but a regular 48K rubber key was also used in the event), that is controlling an educational 6 degree robot arm from Lab-Volt (unfortunately no longer in production).

It consists of the following:
- A new Hardware interface that provides 2 Standard COM ports, using an hardware UART (not bit bangued like Interface I) with full handshake (CTS/RTS) support and 64 bytes buffer for RX and TX for each COM port.
- An Assembly Serial "driver" integrated with the speccy ROM Channel/Stream feature
- A BASIC Application, implementing the Robot protocol on top of the Serial Driver as well as a few Menus to be able to be used almost like a Robot teach pendent and point movement sequence executor.
- A Robot Arm and Controller

Both streams can be used at the same time, since they are completely independent.

To use the Serial communication is as simple as:
- COM1
OPEN #n,"1"

- COM2
OPEN #n,"2"

"1" or "2" is the Channel ID for each COM Port.

"n" is the Stream number (0 to 15).
I would advise against replacing the first 2 Streams (the ROM "K"eyboard Channel Streams), but "S"creen and "P"rinter Channel/Streams should work fine (make sure to close them first and then open, preferably in the same program line to avoid issues with the ROM).

Then just use PRINT, INPUT or INKEY$ to communicate.

P.S.
You can probably recognize who was by my side.

RMartins wrote: ↑Mon Nov 27, 2023 10:35 am I haven't posted in a long while around here, but it was for several good reasons ... and one of them is in this post



There is a riddle on the robot stand table.
Let's see, who can solve it.

hmm, now i did a quote i anc the URL
but its not functioning as a normal link
"Loading Facebook SDK. You will need to disable any adblocker, privacy extension, or built-in tracking protection."

C.Born wrote: ↑Tue Nov 28, 2023 4:14 pm hmm, now i did a quote i anc the URL
but its not functioning as a normal link
"Loading Facebook SDK. You will need to disable any adblocker, privacy extension, or built-in tracking protection."

I'm not a facebook user, hence I don't know exactly what can be the problem.
But I would suggest you try to reduce the link parameters to the bare minimum.

The video and account are supposed to be 100% public, since it's a link from the Load ZX Museum.

NOTE: I can see the exact same message if I open this page in a private Window/Browser.

And I forgot to mention that I added a Suction "End Effector" to the Robot Arm.

The Robot is already built to allow the use of Pneumatics, since it comes with 2 tubes routed through the arm for pneumatic handling.
However the one I bought did not have any of the extra components required for it to work.

Since the Robot is discontinued, they no longer sell parts for it, hence I built my own pneumatic motor and valve module and fitted it on the back of the base and added a proper suction "End Effector", so that it was a lot faster to handle the pieces, instead of using the robot claw.

Here's the video: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/2ew17cy0 ... n0zal&dl=0

zxbruno wrote: ↑Wed Nov 29, 2023 3:02 pm Here's the video: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/2ew17cy0 ... n0zal&dl=0

he you can WATCH it on dropbox !!

Apparently no takers to tackle the riddle.