I've recently begun to like the idea of working on a robot that would make use of Visual Basic (it's all I know, and I could do great stuff with it) on a old laptop capable of running win98.
My dad would be able to help me with the dirty electronics aspect of it, but I had some questions about actually controlling input/output with the serial port (or any other methods, but I understand this is most "popular").
First, I'm not sure how you would actually communicate with the serial device controlling the motors/giving input. Would I be sending "packets" of data (in a way, like TCP/IP?), or would it be more like sending on/off signals on a single pin, and receiving on/off?
Also, I understand from talking to another person that the data I send to the "serial board" controls a low voltage rate in some cases. As I understood, this was not enough power to run any sort of motors I'd be using, so would I need to somehow "boost" the power, or could I use this as a sort of switching method?
As you can see, I'm very new to this idea, and I understand if you think I should look into this more on my own (I've been doing a fair amount of googling on the subject of "laptop robot", but not much on what I wanted to do).
In the end, I'm looking for a fairly understandable way (for a noob) to output/input to a device via serial or something to control motors and get basic switch sensor input.
Thanks for any help you can provide![Wink ;) ;)](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)
My dad would be able to help me with the dirty electronics aspect of it, but I had some questions about actually controlling input/output with the serial port (or any other methods, but I understand this is most "popular").
First, I'm not sure how you would actually communicate with the serial device controlling the motors/giving input. Would I be sending "packets" of data (in a way, like TCP/IP?), or would it be more like sending on/off signals on a single pin, and receiving on/off?
Also, I understand from talking to another person that the data I send to the "serial board" controls a low voltage rate in some cases. As I understood, this was not enough power to run any sort of motors I'd be using, so would I need to somehow "boost" the power, or could I use this as a sort of switching method?
As you can see, I'm very new to this idea, and I understand if you think I should look into this more on my own (I've been doing a fair amount of googling on the subject of "laptop robot", but not much on what I wanted to do).
In the end, I'm looking for a fairly understandable way (for a noob) to output/input to a device via serial or something to control motors and get basic switch sensor input.
Thanks for any help you can provide