Id did further optimize the code and it looks promising, the only thing I would still need is a higher timeout value when the motors are turning. Another option would be to repeat sending the status and position commands until the head responds again. Means if papywizard does not receive the answer ...

My opinion: Building a new electronics maybe not needed. The existing electronics in Merlins can be re-used. It has a L293 driver, two nice PIC microcontrollers etc... Just write a new firmware and reprogram the PICs. They can be reprogrammed as soldered into the circuit. Second idea: I've develope...

Hi, I did continue to test the program but seems I'm not on the right track. If I try to catch and answer all commands received on the serial input in a interrupt function this slows down my motor speed to an unacceptable speed. The reason for that is that the MC can handle only one interrupt at a t...

Yes, it is implemented already ... But I got stuck due to the additional calculations I have to make to 'emulate' a Merlin head... Due to the different encoder value and different offset value I loose too much time in the interrupt and get off synch. It probably would help if Papywizard would use th...

Hi Frederic, thank you for the quick reply. This is very good news. As I saw there are plans anyway for a controller to replace the current Merlin electronics, it would make sense to define a new simple protocol and use this for further development. Few ideas: During initialization phase the master ...

Hi all, first of all thank you all for sharing all this technical details how to build and make your own pano head. I have read most of the topics and also had a close view on the Papywizard development Wiki. Great work and many thanks to Frederic for publishing so much details. I want to program my...