I basically took it and added code to get both mouse and keyboard input and then send that data through the serial port. That was one of the hardest parts of the project for me since I'd never done Windows programming, but the program was actually not very complex. For aiming, the program just takes the speed of the mouse and matches the speed of the robot's aiming motors to it. (What it sends through the serial port is just a number telling the PIC how many clock cycles to wait between "steps" of the step motor. I tried to have the PIC do as little work as possible-- PC's are faster, and it's easier to modify the PC program than the PIC program.) For movement, the program just sends two-character commands; the PIC program interprets them and does the appropriate thing with the movement motors (i.e. left motor forward, right motor back, etc.) Below is a screenshot. (To control the robot, I open the incoming video from my video capture card while running this robot control program at the same time.).
Aiming Motors.
The aiming motors are large step motors, $49 and $65, from an Australian company. (I'm sure there are better sources, though.) The horizontal motion is done with a turntable. It's a round piece of wood on a 6-inch "lazy susan" bearing; the bearings are about $6 at McMaster-Carr or other places. The horizontal aim motor has a pulley attached to its shaft. A belt goes around the pulley, and around the big wood turntable (which has a groove in it for the belt). The belt is a "round belt" from McMaster-Carr, and the pulley is a round belt pulley made to fit it. The vertical aiming is done with an assembly that sits on top of that turntable. A timing belt pulley is attached to the motor; it turns a timing belt that turns another timing belt pulley which is attached to the gun. All of the hardware is from McMaster-Carr. The vertical aiming assembly was built by the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department machine shop at my college.
