automatic control of X Y stage

[rutgers]

Dear All 

I am trying to create a program where based on text input, an XY stage will move to draw out the trajectory. For example I input the letter "A" and the stage moves to draw out the same. I want it to move as if the letter was made up of 'dots' placed at a specific interval. 

Currently I do this manually. For example I write a program which moves the stage a specific distance and direction using loops (for each letter I have to write a separate program). I want this to be automated wherein LabVIEW would detect the letters, converting each to be made with a succession of dots and then move the stage accordingly.

I don’t know whether this is possible using LabVIEW or if there is an easier way to do it. ( For ex. drawing the shapes using dots within LabVIEW itself). I would appreciate your thoughts and help on this.  

Message Edited by rutgers on 05-13-2009 09:57 AM

[Kristen_K.]

Hi rutgers,

As far as reading letters, you could look into the Optical Character Recognition functionality.  

As far as the letters as dots, I'm not sure what data type you're using. You say you draw the letters manually and then translate this motion motion.  How so?  Seems like a neat application.

I hope this helps!

Kristen H.

[nitad54448]

Hi,

I think you need to write a "letter driver" i.e. you need to define a starting point for your letter and then define the XY points, in some array, where you need to go ('ve been using this for XYZ motors, but I needed only vectors...)

regards

[JK1]

A suggestion...

If your string length is fixed then you can create a control similar to seven segment LED display-> generate the binary pattern for each letter->illuminate the LED's corrosponding to each segment

post back for queries.

[mikealder]

Have a look at Wiki for "Dot-Matrix" with a 5x7 dot pattern for each letter, these dots could easily be mapped with specific coordinates for each point and a colum to define whether each dot is used or not, would take quite a while to define the entire alphabet in upper and lower case though as thats 1820 points in total - Mike

[Malhar]

Hi rutgers

Find the attached vis that seams like solutions of your problem.

Click on "kudos" and see the MaGiC.....!!!!

Message Edited by Malhar on 05-15-2009 06:40 PM

[rutgers]

Hi everyone

Thanks for the ideas everyone has come up with. One thing I would like to point out is that I am not interested in just letters but any patterns that are input by the use. I was using letters as a starting point.

@ kristen Thanks for the tip regarding OCR, will look into it

@ nitad54448 Can you elaborate little bit more, also what do you mean by needing only vectors.

@JK1  the seven segment setup is interesting but I would restrict the characters/patterns I could form, and yes, string length would be fixed.

@Mike  I looked into dot matrix and seems like a long process (time to implement is limited)

@ Malhar Can you please convert the vi into Labview 8 as that is the version that I have.

Once again thank you everyone for their inputs and kudos!

Regards

Abhishek

Message Edited by rutgers on 05-15-2009 12:53 PM

[nitad54448]

Hi,

I've used this for vectors myself (on a XYZ stage) but I think you can do this by "letter drivers", as it was the case for the dot-matrix printers twenty years ago.. Suppose you want to write the letter A (or any other pattern for that matter) , and say you want to "write" it with 12*12 resolution. In a table (which you must create first, this is the "driver") you look for the position of "dots" on X and Y, let's say 1,1; 1,3, and so on for all the dots you want to "write". One problem with this method is that you need to create tables for all characters you want to "write"; another one is in the efficiency.. in order to limit the movements you need to look at graph-theory, that is way over my head...

regards

EDIT : did't see it before, Malhar's solution seems fine...

Message Edited by nitad54448 on 05-15-2009 02:06 PM

[Malhar]

Hi abhishek,

Find the vis attached herewith, its for labview 8.0. you can print almost all the cherector contains in standard keyboard into xy graph.