vague question from a beginner

i need some good advice, not even sure im in the right place hi everyone, recently been looking in to moifying a peice of manually operated equiptment i have and making it electricly operated. i have no idea where to start of what methods i need to get a grasp of. the basic outline is that i have seveal speed sensors, weigh cells and servos and i want to design some sort of program to process the information from the speed sensors ect and ouutput the relevent signals to the servos ect. im reliably informed that this sort of software is possible to create but my major issue is how do i convert the signals coming out of the computer port in to electrical current to activate the electrial appliances?

and advice would be much apreciated

thanks in advance

S Shepherd

I think this is a fairly generate request.

You need some form of digital controller board, such as http://www.kadtronix.com/digio.htm

Once we know what you're using, then it might be possible to help you further.

Will

Thanks will

this is the problem i am having, im a complete beginner to all of this and im unsure what i need. this is for all intents and purposes a new products. Regarding these I/O devices described in the link given, what would you reccomend the best aproach for me to basically understand how to apply them i.e. software instalations ect

still a bit vague sorry

thanks again

Steve

I'm afraid I'm not really qualified to advise further. I would suggest you visit a local electronics shop.

thank you for you help,

all the best

steve

The first thing to do is to pull all signals from your device, and multiplex them to, say, a parallel port of the computer. checking the properties of the signal usng an oscilloscope may help prior to feeding the signal into the computer. You may also interface the signals through a processor like Texas instruments chips etc.

Once you have done that, you may use Matlab real time signal processing tool box to get and store the signal digitally, and process as you wish.

Hope this helps.