Electonic Engineers - Small (low) remote controlled electonic motor

[Umfriend]

Just fishing for ideas, haven't got a clue about feasability, economics and expertise required....

The Problem: I own an amplifier that has no remote control. I do not need that for source selection, but it would be very nice if I could control volume at a distance.

Solution?: I have found some very small electric motors. The idea is to mount this on a circuit board, powered by small batteries and cotroled via IR remote control & sensor. I would use a rubber to tranfer the motion of the motor to the volume knob. The website below shows motors as small as 3mm...

http://www.faulhaber.net/servlet/com.itmr.waw.servlet.Anzeige?fremdaufruf=ja&kdid=40929&sprachid=1&htdigurl=/n41815/i45406.html

Then this would have to be controlled remote, have not got the foggiest, but I assume there are kits that enable you to get an "up" and "down" button and a receiver that would have to connect to and control the motor.

Now I know there are some EE's amongst you. How hard is this to accomplish? I Imagine that there are kits available for EE-Geeks and the like, but have not got a clue where to search...

[Umfriend]

Not sure if "rubber" is the right term, I did not mean a condom.....

[Umfriend]

And of course, I forgot one important thing: It ned to be LOW. I want to put the CB under the amp, where I have 8mm of room only for height..... I could make a ..uhm.. depression in the board to gain another, say, 8 mm, but that is about it, and the motor would have to be mounted relatively high I think as the axle would have to appear just in fornt of the amp for me to mount the ...uhm... rubber (?!)

[Umfriend]

Not post-whoring, really.....

[Tjalfe]

well you would need some sort of microcontroller to receive the IR signal and control the motor. the PIC series from wwwmicrochip.com ( you can get free samples ) is one of the more popular. for programming it, you can have fun in assembler, or get a free demo of one of the C compilers available ( Hitech, CCS )

The program should not bee too tricky to do, and I would glandly help if you have issues.
as for the motor, you may want to look at a stepper motor, as they can be controlled more precicely. If you choose a regular motor, you have to have it geared down a fair bit to not spin the volume knob a million times with one button press

You could also look into doing this with Lego. they do IR, and motors ...do they not?

[az]

There are also motor potentiometers out there, i.e. from Alps (which would also "upgrade" your amp").

AZ

[Umfriend]

Shit, I knew this would be way over my head....

I am not going to change my Amp though, az....

[Wombat]

This is a Greebe question, he keeps up on motors and whatnot. But your problem isn't going to be the motor as much as it will be the control.

Also, the phrase you want is "rubber band," or "elastic band." You will sometimes just hear "an elastic," but "a rubber" wouldn't be said.

[DC]

microcontroller msp430 from ti ....

if you understand some german, i can scan you an article from the actual "c't" where a schematics and the software for the msp430 microcontroller is shown for driving "step-motor" which can be used for your amp. I have written an rc5-decoder for that controller too, so if you want you can send it to you.

DC.

[DC]

... and of course you can drive some other motors with that controller (if you use an motordriver-chip)....

[gt40]

Try Velleman they have kits available from 1 to 15 channel, you would solder it together yourself and just add a motor. (and you should be able to find a distributer close by)
To controll up/down volume you will need atleast a 2 channel, but if you would like to also control power, or some other device then obviously you would need the 8, 10 or 15 channel.
if you plan to use this route, there are plenty of ppl here to help with how to wire the motor to go forward/reverse using 2 channels.

[Umfriend]

Wombat, thanks for the info (a "Greebe" question? ). You are right, when I started doing research (i.e. about 45 mins before I posted my question here) I imagined finding very small motors would be the hardest part. I now know it's the controller/receiver and transmitter that wil be the hardest part.

Of course, being a no-no in electronics, I'll be hard pressed to find out even HOW to attach a motor to the controller.

DC, I do understand some German, so yes, I'd appreciate that very much.

gt40, great link, just the kind of thing I was looking for. Unfortunately, all these controllers are far to high, I *think* due to the capacitators on them mainly....

It's probably a thing that is hard (and for me impossible) to realise at anywhere near sensible cost...

[Chucky Cheese]

SERVOs' ???

..how about a servo motor, the kind that are typically used on RC aircraft or cars????

cc

[az]

Cheapest and easiest solution:

Get one of those cheap ultra-small remote-controlled cars. It contains a motor that can go in two directions and a remote control. You just have to take it apart and somehow transmit the relatively fast small motor to something slower, and voilá!

AZ

[rylan]

Realistically a small servo or maybe stepper motor that is usable with reverse polarity is what you'd want, and I believe thats what most receivers with automatic volume knobs use. A standard motor will turn too much too quickly and be hard to control., and you'll need quite a bit of gearing to reduce the speed down enough. Other issue is for the IR microcontroler it'll need to be continuously powered, so your batteries won't last too long.