Position tracking project advice

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Anthrum
 
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Position tracking project advice

Post by Anthrum »

I am working on a position tracking system for a project. I need to track the position of a large rotating object, that has no internal tracking of its own. Very much like a carousel. I want to know the rotation position down to 12 deg steps. My first thought was to just use IR emitters and 2 sensors, to track rotation direction, speed and position. But then I saw the GPS boards. I was wondering is I can't just use 3 of those spread equally around the object, but does that have enough resolution? The object does not rotate fast, less then 3 RPH, and is variable speed. Then I was also thinking of an accelerometer based board....
Any thoughts?

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wdickenson
 
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Re: Position tracking project advice

Post by wdickenson »

What kind of motor drives it ? I have done this using stepper motor / (belt/chain) and once with a geared rotary encoder where we geared it up so that the encoder turned 4x the disk and we had reasonably accuracy.

I am pretty sure GPRS isnt going to be accurate enough but I will leave that part for someone else.

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adafruit_support_bill
 
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Re: Position tracking project advice

Post by adafruit_support_bill »

I'd use a magnetometer such as the LSM303 https://www.adafruit.com/products/1120
It's basically an electronic compass and your compass heading would tell you the angle of rotation.

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Anthrum
 
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Re: Position tracking project advice

Post by Anthrum »

Wow, I'm stupid, the magnetometer seems the simplest solution. Esp if it already has pre built libs.

The rotating mech has no gears or way to track, just tires spinning the base, with variable analog control, so can't do reg opto wheel tracking.

Thanks for the help nice Forum people, I'lll buy this today and start mocking it up!!!!

Fun fun fun

MG

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