[chbot] Cheap opto components

[Richard Jones]

Doh,

I missed the opto components in 3.5" floppies. Thanks Andrew. 

One advantage of the Trademe components is the availability of data sheets
and consistency of performance. For my wall sensors I need six reasonably
matched emitter and detector pairs as I'm doing maths with the results. The
data sheets tell me I can pulse the LEDs with 10A for 1us or 3A for 10us
from memory. Not sure I would do that to an unknown component and expect it
to survive!

I also have a single 5.25" floppy drive waiting to have the stepper motor
taken out. A stepper micromouse design is planned as a followup to the
optical and sonar brush motor mice that I have at the moment.I think the
parallax propeller will make an excellent stepper mouse controller.
Dedicating a cog to each sonar and stepper motor channel still leaves 3 for
other activities.

Morris is all fired up on printer parts. Any other devices we should be
looking out for? I know photocopiers look interesting but I've not found
one to take apart yet.

How is life in Korea?

Richard


On Thu, 18 Jun 2009 18:28:05 +0900 (KST), "Andrew Errington"
<a.errington at lancaster.ac.uk> wrote:
> On Thu, June 18, 2009 17:55, Richard Jones wrote:
>> I'm using optical sensors on my micromouse for wall detectors and
>> rotation sensors, hence my interest in these. The cheapest infra red
> LEDs
>> and photo diodes come from scrap mice. However if your supply of dead
> mice
>> is running out there are some components on Trademe that may be of
>> interest:
> 
> Don't forget, scrap mice show up at the SuperShed regularly, and you can
> get tiny slotted opto switches from 3.5" floppy drives (track 0 sensor).
> 
> Actually, mechanical mice and 3.5" drives are surely fast disappearing.
> Better stock up now.
> 
> Andrew
> 
> 
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