Hello. I would like to add an additional rotating base and, an additional non-lynxmotion 12vdc motor and an additional 24vdc motor to the ALD5 (and control all from one pc).
What is the best way to do this?
thanks
more details on the components you want to add, like part numbers and data sheets or links to same, would get you less general answers as people try to help.
the single largest question in my mind is if you plan/want/need to try and control the 12vdc and 24vdc motors as part of a servo-mechanism or just allowing them to run as motors without a specific control loop. if you plan to use them as part of a servo-mechanism then what is your intended feedback device/method, and what if any gear ratio is there between the motor output shaft and the feedback input.
Hmmm. Good question.
1.) I would like to use the 12vdc to control a solenoid valve, which basically opens and closes to allow air in. It will need to be part of the RIOS program. I.e. After robot does x, 12vdc valve will engage
2.) 24vdc is (hopefully) for a circular conveyor belt system, which will need to stop at an intended location so that the ALD5 can pick and place the item on the conveyor belt.
Any help would be appreciated. Basically, I just want to be able to control valve and mini conveyor belt as if they were just additional servos.
solenoid valve is easy and you can probably use one of the battle switches very easily. need to pick one rated for the current the solenoid will draw. this isn’t the most efficient (cost or power) way to do this but it’ll work fine with the advantage of being easy. these switches will directly take a standard r/c servo PWM input to determine on/off output state.
the 24v motor is a little more interesting to do. realistically you meed a DC motor controller and then you will need some way to know either how far the shuttle has traveled and/or if it is at the desired position. you can theoretically use 3 or 4 optical flags to tell you which position you are at. each flag has a slot or reflective sensor and you simply code which position you are at by which sensors are blocked. you can read up to 4 inputs back through the ssc-32 directly. alternatively you could use a shaft encoder on one of the conveyor sprockets and count pulses or something to determine position. somehow you need a little more input capability than the ssc-32 has all by itself… mostly because the encoder pulses will be too fast for you to poll them through the ssc-32 inputs.
a slightly more complicated option is to forego the ssc-32 and use a basic atom pro and bot board II to control the arm and motors. you would need substantially more programming but a lot of the pieces are available as snippets in work other people have done… tutorials, projects, etc. the big up side to this is you have as many as 16 digital i/o and 8 analog i/o that can be configured as the servo outputs, encoder inputs, home / limit flag inputs, serial port to the PC, and possibly a e-stop button or something if this is for a public or commercial application of some sort.
lots of choices. 
Maybe something a little more simple to control the 24v motor would be to use a motor control limit switch. Put a limit switch bump on the conveyor belt where you want it to stop. When the bump opens the limit the switch the belt stops. To make the belt start moving again, put a MOSFET in parallel with the limit switch, and activate it with an ssc-32 output pin for a second or two . This would energize the motor allowing the conveyor belt to move past the limit switch and continue moving until it once again encounters the limit switch.