Fischertechnik Trainingsrobot

The Fishertechnik Robot

The Trainingsrobot is a robotic arm made by the German company Fischertechnik.

Note: Fischertechnik additionally made the Fischertechnik Computing Experimental robot kit for the CPC.

This trainingsrobot was also produced for other 8bit computers of the era. (Commodore 64/VIC20 and the BBC micro)

The only difference was the interface.

The interface for the CPC (as well as newer RS232/USB versions) consists of:

• 8 single bit inputs ports (eg. for sensing when a robot-arm reached its end-position)
• 4 "bidirectional" ports (for motor control) (here "bidirectional" rather means "three-state-output" aka "forward/stop/backward")
• 2 analog inputs (eg. for temperature sensor)

Technical

Fischertechnik has built several interfaces:

• Interface for Commodore 24pin User Port (used on C64/VIC20)
• Interface for one-directional 25pin printer port (used on PCs) (this might have been also used by CPC...? if so, with 34pin/36pin connector, of course)
• Interface for RS232 port (used on PCs) (9600 baud, 8bit, no parity, 1 stopbit)
• Interface for USB port (used on PCs)

Parallel Printer Port Interface

25pin PC Adapter

Designed for one-directional printer ports: Data is read/sent via Pin11/Pin4 (which data is to be transferred is selected via the other DATA lines) (details on how the data is transferred exactly are unknown?).

Printer Pin        Interface Signal    Comment
Pin2 (Data Bit0)   Load-out            ;motor control output
Pin3 (Data Bit1)   Load-in             ;digital sensor 8bit input
Pin4 (Data Bit2)   Data-out            ;data from computer
Pin5 (Data Bit3)   Clock               ;data clock
Pin6 (Data Bit4)   Trigger-x           ;analog sensor X input
Pin7 (Data Bit5)   Trigger-y           ;analog sensor Y input
Pin11 (Busy)       Data-in             ;data to computer

The parallel port interface connects via a 20pin cable, to a printer port adapter (existing adapters are 25pin for PC/Amiga/Atari, 34pin for CPC, or 36pin for german CPC6128).

Reviews

The trainingsrobot was reviewed in the danish magazine Amstradbladet 1986, Issue 3/4 (page 4-6)

Pictures

• Fischertechnik Trainingsrobot
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  Schneider box

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  The manual

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  Robot in closeup

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  Connected to CPC6128

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  Robot and interface

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  The Robot at an exibition in Spain

Weblinks

http://www.fischer.de/ fischer group homepage