Remote control for motor volume potentiometer

[pingfloid]

I am going to install a motorised Alps potentiometer in my valve amp, and I wonder where I can find schematics or kits to build a remote controller. ¿Any of you have done it already? ¿maybe using the remote control from a cheap radio-control car?

I have find this two suppliers for the potentiometer so far:

www.audioelectronicsupply.com

http://www.me-au.com/alps.html

¿Do you know some suplier in Europe?

¿Any one have tried to build this circuit?:

http://www.siliconchip.com.au/cms/A_30559/article.html

Thank you

[Faber]

here you have.
The project you mentioned it's very intresting, using a PIC you can have a very high flexibility.
Otherwise you can try to use a different schematic that controls a H-Bridge after R7 in the Receiver.

HTH
Bye Fabrizio

[Faber]

Just duplicate the receiver set them on different freqs thru R9 and go.

bye!

[UrSv]

Elektor also published a very simple project in January 2001 called Learning RC5 decoder.

[sma]

Hi,

I interest for this project too,but anyone know where to purchase complete kit with part for this remote control application?because difficult to found part for this application in my country.

And where to buy alps motorized pots?i looking for 50k alps motorized blue pots

[eeka chu]

Does anyone sell moderately priced motorised potentiometers? I would like to be able to fade two or three settings at the same time, so I can't really afford to use Alps.

John

[Magura]

If you want to run more than one pot off the remote, you will have to use stepmotoers i guess. ALPS motorised pots dont runs all that precise, so i doubt even cheaper solutions would do. If you wanna do it real cheap, you rip a couple of old matrix printers. They include a (mostly)real nice stepmotor from the sledge.

Stepmotor drivers should not cause any problems.


Magura

[eeka chu]

That sounds like a good idea. I did have some old dot printers but I've just gotten rid of them... anyway, a few small steppers isn't going to be much I don't think.

How could I go about coupling these to the steppers? The way I see it done on CNC gear is using a pulley and a timing belt, but I guess just a standard, printer like, belt would do fine here... due to the minimal amounts of force involved.

Really, my question is, how would I couple the belt to the pot?

Would I be right in thinking I should just use another pulley on the shaft of the pot? Possibly with a large ratio between the pot and stepper to increase stepping accuracy? Does anywhere make prefabricated pulleys specifically for mounting onto pots, I'd rather not have to start drilling holes in them if I don't have to.

Or am I thinking about this entirely the wrong way and I should just use something like nylon gears instead?

John

[Magura]

One stepper per pot...directly mounted on the pot.

Thats the whole point of using a stepper. Now you actually need a fairly big stepper to do it like this....thats why i suggested to rip them out of old matrix printers, since theyre a bit expensive.

If you go for steppers thats got 1.8 degree steps, you should be good to go.


Magura

[tcpip]

The recent issue of Elektor carried the second of a two-part article on a stepper motor controller. It's quite a sophisticated controller, which uses JFETs to drive the motors. The controller has a uC at its heart, and accepts short ASCII commands over a parallel port. It can be connected to any PC and driven. IIRC, it controls up to eight motors.

I am not saying that this is the ideal stepper motor controller for a preamp, but it's probably a good starting point for someone wanting to begin playing with stepper motors. For PCBs and other stuff, I guess one can check the Elektor UK site.

Tarun