I got my LMD18200 working last night, and can now successfully control a DC motor from the PIC. No PID controller yet, but it’s not far off. Pretty soon I’ll be ready to fire up a motor in place and bring the arm to life.

Towards that goal, I’m continuing my foray into the world of sparkies (electrical engineers) by laying out a circuit board (for the robot arm) with PCB-123. Not only do they share my rhyming moniker domain-naming scheme, they provide (Windows-only) free schematic and layout software. We’ll see how it goes.