Saturday, August 11, 2018

Projectile Motion with Analog Computers

After some recent study of old Analog Computers HERE I thought I would try to get some feel of how to work with them using a software implementation.

I found the Open Source tool Scilab that has a module called Xcos that is a graphical editor to design hybrid dynamical systems models very similar to the  analog computer functional blocks.

I was interested in the projectile motion problem that the old Heathkit EC-1 was able to do, that is outlined in the manual on page 27. The analog Op Amps were vacuum tubes in a EC-1 !

After spending more than half of my time figuring out the software and how it worked I was able to get something close. Below is the XY plot of a projectile launched at a 80 degree angle with an initial impulse and gravity.


The diagram of the configuration is shown below.
Scilab is a very powerful tool and I have just scratched the surface of its capabilities with the use of the Xcos module. I was running this on a Ubuntu virtual machine so it was not super fast.


I would like to experience this setup on a physical analog computer since the plots are not real-time and are not on a oscilloscope like "in the day". I think I am missing the faster iterations and interactivity of the true analog system with the wiring board, meters and oscilloscope :-)

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