Hi, Thanks for managing such a wonderful home automation website.
I have a question about my project.
It is building a conveyor that transports all kinds of my stuff at my home backyard.
I am trying to build a small conveyor (Length : 300mm x Width : 130mm), which rotates for a designated distance(for about 100mm) every time a beam sensor is disturbed.
So, I figured that this kind of simple process can be done by some cheap controllers that are easy to create circuits.
My question is (1) what type of software and chip should I use for my application?
(2) In order to use a beam sensor with this stepper motor driver circuit(http://electronics-diy.com/electronics/ ... motors.php), how should I connect the sensor to this circuit(or to controller circuit)?

My stepper motor has a specification like this.
*Voltage *Current *Resistance *Inductance *Holding torque
4.0V 0.95A 4.2Ohm 3.3mH 1.6kgf.cm

Any word of advice from you would be very helpful to me.
Thank you.

Hi there... I'm not sure if I can really be of much help with this kind of question, but I'll take a stab at it.

I wouldn't recommend HAI for this unless you are willing to spend some serious money for controlling the conveyor. I would recommend a PIC or the Ardunino controller for something like this. It's open source and can probably handle your needs. Check them out at http://www.arduino.cc/

Hope this helps,
Danny

hi, thank you for your reply.
it's a very happy thing to have someone's reply.
I've used arduino before to control my conveyor and I've successfully done it thanks to other arduino forum participants.
This time, my intension is to try out with cheaper methode than arduino.
arduino has been very easy to work with but it's kind of expensive considering the fact that i must get it from overseas countries like usa or singapore...
i am looking forward to turn most of my home surroundings into automatics.
so, i need much cheapter way to do it. from software to hardware.
Yes, PIC would be a very good solution. or AVR so on...
As I explained before, I would like to achieve a very simple mechanism.
I would like my conveyor(motorized by stepper motor) to only be rotated for a designated revolution(that means I need to be able to control the number of revolution times) whenever a optical beachip would be suitable for my application.
any word of advise would be highly appreciated..
m sensor is desturbed...
I have no idea which PIC or AVR

Hi Mingki,

If you are finding the Arduino to expensive you should check out http://www.freeduino.org/