Hello!
I am a mechanical engineering graduate student, my masters' thesis is the design, construction, and control of a linear delta robot. My question to you guys is whether a phidget is capable of switching digital outputs on/off at a frequency high enough to drive a stepper motor at high speeds while microstepping.
My current setup is using c# to do the kinematics and trajectory generation, then I send 6 polynomial coefficients (the motors follow 5th order polynomial trajectories) and a time for each motor to an arduino due via serial communication. The arduino has a motor control algorithm that moves the motors using pololu stepper motor drivers. I feel like this approach is not very robust, and would love to cut the arduino out of the picture altogether.
I have read that serial communication is not suitable for doing precisely timed communication in the realm of microsecond intervals. If phidgets use a similar communication to control the inputs/outputs of the phidget I can see it not working. Is this the case? Or do phidgets use a communication protocol more likened to a parallel port? I considered using a parallel port but didn't want to risk frying my expensive gaming computer by messing up the electrical isolation circuit I would need to build.
Thanks!!