All-Analog DIY Segway Project

An anonymous reader writes "One of the zany hacker-makers here at MIT just finished this DIY Segway project (video). Difference from the others: it's all analog. The controller is built without a microprocessor or even digital logic. It does use a gyroscope like the real Segway. The functionality looks fairly basic, but the fact that the controller works at all is amazing. The guy has a ton of other projects on his site too. Definitely worth a read for people who enjoy building things."

Controllers were analog before they were digital.

[RoverDaddy]

Digital controllers -emulate- analog behavior (at least many of them do). There's a pantload of research and science behind analog control.

Re:My thoughts exactly

[0100010001010011]

Kids these days couldn't imagine trying to implement a PID controller without a microprocessor. It does make it easy to watch what is going on.

Watching large governors [wikipedia.org] work is pretty cool. No electronics to speak of. Just a properly tuned set of weights and some geometry.

Re:The Land Before CPUs

[skywatcher2501]

Talking about spaceflight, the Russians only recently [wikipedia.org] replaced the analogue Soyuz control system with a fully digital one.

Re:I would like to join the chorus

[Jane Q. Public]

Heisenberg and Planck might disagree with you on that.