Moving Target

Earlier this year my boss said I'd get to write the code that moves a motor in a breast ultrasound probe. "Oh boy!" I thought. Finally, after years of pushing pixels around on a screen, I'd reached the big time! A tiny servo motor would spin, entirely due to my will! Exaultant, I gathered the CD-ROMs, cables, demo boards and two dozen marketing PDFs from the motor company.

I'd entered a new world. Setting off purposefully, I immediately fell hard asleep on my desk over the "data sheet." Companies that make motors divide them into subcategories and keep their software very general. They had an application that lets you move the motor, tune it and read various properties from the controller board. Setting up the software requires you to enter a host of cryptic values that are extremely scary. And boring. And you are never sure if you got the right answer.

For example we had Maxxon Motor SRV-432343 with 2 channel control and demo board EPOS2. But the software didn't know about this motor. Someone named Chris might come along and reassure me that SRV-43234-R* was the right selection to make. And there wasn't a place to specify 2 channel control. Instead, the channel choices were "3" and "1+polarity". I entered "1+polarity." I was getting the hang of this: when it doubt improvise.

But it's scary too, because being unfamiliar with hardware control I'm imaging all sorts of storylines ending with a stripped motor, a big phone bill and copious sobbing. (to be continued...:D)