oscilloscope as RS232 pulse source, possible?

Hi I'm new to this forum. I am a self learner of Robotics/general electronics and my question may sound clueless but I'll give it a try anyways.<BR><BR>1. <BR>Can I use an oscilloscope or any pulse generator as a pulse source to control AX series controllers as long as the oscilloscope or the pulse generator generate compatible and meaningful binary RS232 pulse sequences? <BR><BR>2. <BR>Should the RS232 communication with AX controllers be bi-directional? In other words, does the oscilloscope also need to receive and acknowledge pulse coming from the SMC04? Or would it work just fine in one-way? (I take it that I will lose many useful functionalities such as data monitoring and watdog etc. but I do not really need these extra interface. As long as I have control over the motor, it will be fine with me)<BR><BR><BR>Thank you in advance.

Serial probably not. Servo PWM, should not be to much trouble though... You must have some sort of fancy oscilloscope for a learner though... All mine does is read signals...

So there are signal generators for a few hundred bucks that will let you generate a servo compatible signal (BK Precision and the like)... You will need one that can generate a variable duty cycle square wave...

Or company's like Astroflight make servo testers for under $30 that will do the same thing.

You could also have a bunch of fun with something like a Parallax Propeller chip... Or an Arduino Diecimila (Which is kind of designed for artists so there are lots of ground-up tutorials that start with not crossing the red and black wire and go from there :-)

So anyway... I'm not quite sure what your driveing at with your question... It's kind of like asking if you can cook a pizza in the toaster... Sure you _can_ but there are better ways.

Best of luck,

Peter M.