[HeyLaughingBoy]

Thank you for posting this, it reaffirms what I've been thinking for so long. There are many opportunities to retrofit old systems of all types with modern low-cost embedded technologies.

Around 2019 or so I was approached by an engineer who had a small business retrofitting very old machine tools with modern motion controls. Think very large lathes and planers. The problem they had was that in order to get these systems working with newer controls, they had to make time-consuming modifications to the old machines, in some cases modifying the axis motors and that cost added up quickly. The engineer realized that it was theoretically possible to take the old analog position signals and convert them into something a modern motion controller could read. That converter box would make the retrofit pretty much plug & play, but he didn't have the programming expertise to make it happen.

We probably built the first iteration of the converter for under $50 in parts and less than 50 hours of development time. That had me searching for other similar opportunities. I have found a few, but they tend to be one-offs that aren't worth the time unless you're already building something similar. Either that or my ability to see opportunity sucks!

[madaxe_again]

Yup. I live on a river. We flooded catastrophically in 2019, which made me suddenly care about the government’s network of river level meters.

Turns out, they abandoned most of them in 2008, as it was the local council who were meant to maintain them, but they couldn’t afford it - a chat with the president revealed they’d been paying €15k a year for each station to maintain it and they’d cost about €100k each.

I went and looked at the battered remains. Sounding tube. Ultrasound transducer. Box of 90’s electronics.

Anyway, long story short I banged out six of them for them for about €80 a piece - the expensive bits were the batteries and the dinky solar panel. ESP32, ultrasonic transducer, GSM and LoRa (as two are outside of the cell network), haven’t had to touch them in five years and we now know when it’s time to evacuate, rather than wading out in the night while trees sail past us at 60kph.

So much stuff like this.

[japhyr]

Where are you located? Around 2020 I put together a landslide risk monitoring site that's entirely based on stream gauges:

https://khmpsitka.org

It's an interesting approach that's way simpler than relying on soil moisture sensors placed high up on mountainsides. It's not as widely applicable as measuring soil moisture directly, but it's been running steadily for over 5 years now.

[fragmede]

They didn't offer any of the €15k a year to you, did they?

[madaxe_again]

They hadn’t been paying since 2008, hence it was all derelict trash - they don’t even have the budget to maintain the roads or keep the school open, never mind monitor river levels.

My interest was not drowning, rather than pecuniary.

[cechmaster]

so what are they doing?

[madaxe_again]

Care and education, and whatever they can manage with whatever’s left over. Same as pretty much every council everywhere.

[smm11]

Next you can hook up an abandoned nuke silo, right?

[madaxe_again]

Pretty sure you could manage launch control with nothing but a bunch of ESP32s and home assistant. Sadly there are no rad hardened ESP32s I know of, but that’s what the silo’s for.

[ryukoposting]

I think I see some parallels with the aftermarket for old cars. Holley's entire catalog is "here's a thing that'll modernize your 1960s engine without replacing the whole damn engine"

This kind of thing is a low-volume, low-margin business by nature. It's those kinds of businesses that the megalomaniacs of our field tend to ignore. There are people with needs, and money they are willing to exchange for a solution to those needs. But there's no path to world domination by selling carburetors (or bowling alley control systems) so those problems never get solved by anyone with the means to do so. It's a shame, really.

[red369]

I once expected an aftermarket industry to pop-up to hybridize old cars. Old rear-wheel drive manual cars sound easiest.

Generator attached to the flywheel instead of the starter motor, and then find some way to squeeze a drive motor by the rear diff (probably more complicated, but surely not impossible). I thought something might pop up once companies like Bosch started making generic e-axles for manufacturers to use.

With a small Li-ion battery (and all the usual inverters, etc.), it could work like a manually operated version of the dual-motor Honda hybrid system. Put it into neutral, and whatever energy is in the battery could drive the motor on the rear axle. The engine could automatically kick-in and drive the generator if there's not enough in the battery.

It would never be as economical as a purpose-built hybrid, but old manual cars are often reasonably economical on the open road, and terrible in city traffic. Targeting only the urban fuel consumption would go a long way towards keeping them useable, with the added bonus of making manual shifting optional in stop-go traffic. Small motors would be enough for city speeds, and with a small battery, it sounds cheap to me at least.

I doubt it could ever be a simple kit, but I thought people would have a go.

[studog]

People probably are having a go. Here's one for pickups: https://edisonmotors.ca/trucks/pickup-conversion/

[Scoundreller]

> Generator attached to the flywheel instead of the starter motor, and then find some way to squeeze a drive motor by the rear diff (probably more complicated, but surely not impossible).

Some vehicles have this as a “battery starter generator” where the “hybrid” functionality is entirely on the accessory belt.

https://www.bosch.com/stories/48v-hybrid-battery/

https://hackaday.com/2025/01/24/bosch-starter-motor-freed-fr...

[humanpotato]

Automotive engineer here. One consideration for the diff motor is that it would REALLY sag the diff. I think the only way to go would be a front and rear generator/motor combo in one housing to replace the transmission, powering the rear end with a driveshaft. A direct drive clutch between the front and rear motor/generator would economize driving and assure high power at high speeds.

[BizarroLand]

How about a front wheel mounted drivetrain with the motors built into the wheel hubs?

That would effectively add 4wd to old cars and allow the onboard engine to work normally with an option for eboost/edrive with the only extreme modification being adding the battery and control modules.

[high_priest]

You would have to provide custom replacement hubs, for all the vehicle types you want to support. Plus, adding a clutch system to a hub drive is not feasable. So, the hub engines are engaged all the time.

I've considered it as a modification for FWD track performance cars. It is much easier to add a hub into a stiff rear axle. Turns out, that adding an electric motor, which is not part of the main engine assembly, ads way too much complexity in controlling the whole thing and weight to power ratio, that it stops quickly stops making sense.

[dajt]

We had a guy give a talk at our local nerd meet-up about doing this to an old landrover with the hopes of commercialising it. Did a good job, but it was only for someone with money to burn.

Looks like he did commercialise it: https://www.jauntmotors.com/series

I recognise some of the photos from back then.

[red369]

I'm a bit slow on looking at this, but looks to me like it is for a full-electric conversion and not to a hybrid?

Still very cool to see and I hope it goes well for him. The more options the better.

[rzerowan]

Wouldnt the weight of the old chassis be a impedement to mods , older models tended to be more robustly buildt. Or what cut-off date for mods would be appropriate (last 10 years?) as beyond a certain cutoff would not be cost effective and most likely would be a hobby project done for the love of it.

[foxyv]

The problem is that environmental regulations kind of act like a double edge sword with regards to hybrid conversions. They prevent Jim Bob from selling his environmental disaster kit, but they also prevent Bob Jim from selling his Hybrid drivetrain conversion without expensive approvals. This is why most people do BEV conversions. The kits are available because they are zero emissions and don't fall afoul of the environmental regulations.

[Scoundreller]

I was thinking of a “feature” on manuals that ran electrical and accessory-belt stuff full blast during engine braking.

The best time to run your a/c or turn the seat warmers: when you’re trying to expel energy.

Would give you some extra braking without heating up the engine and take a small load off your brakes.

That or turn any vehicle into a mild plug-in hybrid for all electrical loads and flywheel the alternator until that time. Gasoline-powered generators are not very efficient.

Might get a few percent extra efficiency without having to touch anything mechanical.

[kfse]

My guess:

1) New cars are too cheap to make at scale.

2) Old cars are quite unsafe to drive, comparatively (airbags, backup cameras, lane departure alerts, blind angle alerts, etc)

[jimnotgym]

2) cars have had airbags for a pretty long time. Backup cameras are a simple retrofit. Lane departure alerts are not universally loved, mine is turned off...

[rockostrich]

To be fair to the person you're responding to, airbag systems in modern vehicles are a lot safer than the single airbag per front passenger in older cars. The original airbag systems were just a single bag that deployed at a single rate based on an inertia sensor. Modern systems have several bags with multi-stage deployments that are inflated depending on seat belt and weight sensors.

But yea, as for the rest of the "safety mechanisms" the only modern change that I can think of that's not easy to retrofit but is a huge safety boost is blind spot detection. As someone that drives older (and smaller) cars, being able to see the blind spot detection light on other cars' mirrors is always a bit of a relief that their car will notify them if they try to change lanes.

[noir_lord]

Aerodynamics as well, new cars and especially ev/hybrids are slippery compared to many/the average if we take old cars to mean 50’s through 70’s.

[jimnotgym]

Does that matter much if you only drive around town at 30mph?

[rob74]

An older sedan-style car might still be more aerodynamic than a modern SUV, simply because the frontal surface area is smaller. The less air you have to push out of the way in the first place, the better.

[cansofgrease]

The big one is probably cost and scaling.

[psd1]

Cameras are a mitigation for high waistlines, and only a partial one. Keep your cameras and alerts, and give me a car with better fields of vision.

I think there are important dimensions of safety that go unmeasured. You have much less road awareness in new cars.

Survivability is great and all, but not at the expense of children and pets becoming invisible.

All the focus on survivability provided another incentive for makers to put ever larger pieces of steel on the road. I disagree that new cars are safer.

I have experienced driver aids glitching, and i want none of it. Anything that can take control of the car needs to be bulletproof, and it isn't.

[yobbo]

Stuff like this exists for bicycles. For mopeds and motorcycles there are electrification kits.

It should be possible to just replace the flywheel altogether with a generator/motor that both brakes and powers during each cycle, cancelling vibrations. Then more generation during deceleration, and more power during acceleration.

[mattgrice]

In the US RWD manual cars have been exclusively sport/GT for decades. They aren't cheap and a hybrid swap and/or daily driving miles would destroy their value.

[high_priest]

There are hybrid packages, which are very good for performance applications. A performance oriented conversion, done well, should boost the value.

[ozim]

There is no shame and no business there.

We just read a story of someone who didn’t want to pay market price and went DIY.

There are companies doing bowling alley equipment and you can pay them for maintenance.

Is there a single one of those on F500 list? No and people are running those companies and what OP did … he didn’t want to pay market price.

Well yeah those companies are overpriced if you are software engineer who can wire up and program couple of ESPs have own bowling alley and have free time.

[mrb]

Don't dismiss the OP so abruptly. IMHO he is convincingly making the case that there is likely a business opportunity for something between a $120k off-the-shelf system and $1.6k in DIY hardware.

[tonyedgecombe]

It's just lack of competitive pressure. I bet if you investigate you will find there are only a couple of suppliers that have the bowling alley market sewn up between them.

[nativeit]

You’d die on the back of unreliable operation and relatively high maintenance. A DIY system built off of cheap ESP32s is never going to be reliable enough. The system as described above is the sort of thing I would happily operate for myself, but would never attempt to sell as a product. Anyone who’s tried to hold together a few dozen ESP32-powered IoT devices will likely attest—they’re very impressive for their cost, but hardly reliable on the scale of years.

[Scoundreller]

> but hardly reliable on the scale of years.

I’ve had similar experiences with “enterprise”-grade hardware.

But sometimes the “price” isn’t just the hardware, but also having someone on-call 24/7 to support and possibly fly-out to investigate within X hours.

[section33]

Oh totally. I actually thought about exactly that. I'm basically thinking "this -will- fail at some point, so when it does, I want to be able to replace a failed unit very rapidly."

I'm tinkering with an auto-provisioning function that tells a given ESP what node type it's connected to and configures itself from there.

[kfse]

Work out how many bowling alleys there are and how many of them are in the market for an upgrade or a fresh install, trying to get to be the king of that hill is a lot of work and risk for not really life changing rewards compared with what a self-avowed SRE could make just pulling paychecks

[qdotme]

Well, the reality of those types of businesses is that once set they do become a relatively low maintenance (and for some, very low 'urgent' maintenance) passive income.

It's really easy to pull $300k/y as an SRE (but that does amount to about $100/hr equivalent in SMB, assuming realistic >40h workweeks and the tax advantages in SMB, even less if you have to pay for services you enjoy and can't find time for due to FTE - nannies or even changing your own oil).

It is extremely hard to keep that $100/hr and a sliding scale - one week you work 50h, the other 30h, then you take a month or three off at $5h/week.

Mine (and I don't regret these) is running midsize PV plants. Slightly bigger than residential (hey, does OP want solar PV on the rooftop? I have a bowling alley as a client, they are a great match), but again not large enough to attract a scaled business.

I approximately put in 5h on each a year after the initial setup (around 100hr each), for $10k/y in profit from each.

[ozim]

There is not much to compete for. Competitive pressure doesn’t magically spawn out of thin air.

[pwillia7]

yeah feels like you can only target end consumers or hobby business people as any real business would just reinvest capital in equipment that is modern and can compete or get rid of the business if it's not worth the $$$

[HeyLaughingBoy]

I think you might be surprised to find out how many "real businesses" can't "just reinvest capital" and have to keep struggling on with what they have.

[pwillia7]

that's fair

[lostlogin]

> retrofitting very old machine tools with modern motion controls.

I have a friend who has automated an old food production line. Eg peanut butter making, Muslie roasting etc.

With no background in programming he got machines hooked up measuring various things - eg peanut butter levels with ultrasound, roast temps, rotation rates.

Zero version control and eyebrow raising methods but massive improvement in safety and throughput. Really impressive.

[eru]

I suspect this is where our AI agents will really come to shine: helping people who might have a technical bend but are not programmers do cool things.

[fragmede]

Yeah. Anyone who hated writing code but had to, like biologists and chemists, now don't have to.

[baranul]

This is arguably a dangerous fallacy, particularly for anything critical. When the person doesn't know programming, it becomes harder to guide agents and do reviews, leading to overlooking issues and accepting mistakes. This gets amplified for any creative solutions or fixing future problems, where it is something the LLM was not trained on or has limited data about the subject. Plus add how much money spent on tokens.

Maybe a way for non-programmers to better understanding what they are saying, is to think about translation. It's kind of like saying a person doesn't need to know anything about Spanish to now sell LLM translated books from English to Spanish.

Yes, the LLM can do translations for you, and quickly. But, as you don't know Spanish, you won't know how good the translation is. You are less likely to catch all kinds of mistakes, from bad grammar to wrongfully translated idiomatic expressions. The less Spanish that you know, the more likely you are to be impressed or fooled into a false sense of security. Then when native and fluent Spanish speakers read your books, they may rate it as mostly gibberish and nonsense.

[gambiting]

I'd argue we're there anyway with all kinds of non-programmers using languages like Python to achieve their goals.

On one hand, it results in some absolutely horrendous code that takes 100x longer to run than necessary, because it lacks the most basic principles of engineering. On the other hand....it works and does what is asked of it.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

Exactly! It might be a "dangerous fallacy" (?) but people will still do it and you can't stop them.

[rkuodys]

I think there is negative bias. The counterpoint being that with code you can test input vs output. With foreign language you cannot. Programmed system, either computes what you want or it doesnt. For Spanish you either have a person who can do testing for you. Good practises and cybersec questions matter in programming, but system doing what it is supposed to do (success path) matters more imho.

[evandijk70]

The current situation is that the person that doesn't know programming will do it anyway. They will likely make more mistakes than an LLM will.

[jimnotgym]

Better still, the llms are easier to get on with than real developers. You explain to a real developer what you want, after a few weeks you find every word you said has been understood in the frankly weirdest way possible and every grey area, instead of asking, has gone way off piste.

The same goes for the LLM, but it replies in minutes and costs next to nothing, so you can correct it quickly, and you don't even have to be politely patient with it to avoid hurting its feelings

[baranul]

That's questionable, in terms of both outcome and cost. LLMs can misunderstand intent, hallucinate, or produce unwanted results too. As you noticed. But, among the advantages in favor of real programmers is outside of the context understanding of what the customer may want and fixing their request or solving the problem in unforeseen ways, despite the expected result not being properly stated.

True, LLMs can spit things out faster, but often in context to needing greater specificity and giving cookie cutter results. In regards to that, humans can copy and paste too. The time saved on the front end, can be lost by needing to come up with tighter specifications or the need for human review, to ensure quality.

[silisili]

I'm mixed on this. They may not(or may) write elegant code, but they have clear intent about its parameters and purpose. I've seen LLMs mess up numbers by order of magnitude on multiple occasions, which could range anywhere from annoying to fatal, depending on the field.

Like all things, helpful as long as it's checked very carefully.

[EPWN3D]

The less physicist code exists in the world the better.

[torginus]

The problem with super smart people is that they often succeed without having to or bothering to understand even the most basic common sense techinques.

I had a friend who told me a story, that when he was a kid, he found a copy of the Borland Pascal DOS compiler on his dad's machine. It came with a demo demonstrating the graphics library, but that was the extent of his introduction to Pascal, most of the syntax he figured out by trial and error.

He went ahead and build a quite elaborate tank game, with things like enemy AI, multiple weapons and destructible terrain.

The code was a fever dream, but the game was pretty impressive, and enjoyable.

One of the things he didn't intuit, was that you could not only use built in functions, but define your own. So when he needed a code block a second time, he just copied it, so you can imagine how pleasant that code looked.

[Cthulhu_]

They do still write code, to a point, but it's in human language with a humanized feedback loop instead of the lower level of code.

[eru]

Yes. And in addition, Claude and Kimi and friends will happily do version control and write tests etc.

They'll even volunteer to do so and recommend.

[xorcist]

Not really though. There's a whole product segment like LabView, which has existed for over three decades now, for people like biologists and chemists who do not like to code.

Those tools are built for quick iteration. Compared to that, using an LLM surely feels a lot like programming. Also a lot less deterministic.

[BobbyTables2]

I think you’re absolutely correct.

I suspect it is practical to do a small one-time run of maybe a 1000 copies of a purely hardware device and sell them. Of course, that is just kicking the can down the road a bit farther… At least dealing with obsolescence with purely analog parts is simpler…

As soon as software appears, things become less ideal. Now the HW and SW become highly specialized to a single vendor’s single family of devices. Plus, bugs and internet connectivity almost ensure a potentially unbounded number of updates or forever broken functionality. Even toolchains fade into obsolescence…

Sure, one can redesign for a new microcontroller from a new vendor. Maybe with new RTOS too. Of course, that is almost as much work as the initial design and probably done by someone else at a later date. Yuck!

(And I saw this as a software engineer!)

Definitely something to be said of the old habit of a simple analog design with schematics fully provided to the end user. This is something probably still needed today, but perhaps commercially challenging, especially with countries like China in play…

[TacticalCoder]

> Thank you for posting this, it reaffirms what I've been thinking for so long. There are many opportunities to retrofit old systems of all types with modern low-cost embedded technologies.

At my shooting range, where security is very important, we're replacing the old antiquated "fire stop" (when everybody on "shared" lanes has to stop shooting for there's at least one person going to change the targets) system with a modern system of electro-magnets and embedded devices. Mechanical safeguards where, by default, the 10 lanes (there two times 10 lanes, the 50 meters ones and the 100 meters ones) have to stop shooting and then an embedded system with a little controller for each lane that needs to be working to give the greenlight / "fire frei" ("free to shoot").

We mostly decided on the switch after a failure of the old system: the "free to shoot" system has recently been given even though there was still one person outside, changing the targets (nothing bad happened but this is a serious incident).

We asked for quotes for a system that is always "door locked" / red light / "fire stop", unless everything works fine and every lane gives the greenlight (each shooter has now one badge).

Same thing as in TFA: cost in hardware is minimal compared to the quoted prices. Like basically 1/50th of the quoted price.

[berkes]

> There are many opportunities to retrofit old systems of all types with modern low-cost embedded technologies.

I'd leave out the "old" there.

An example: Friends work(ed) as engineers in theaters and music-venues. The costs for (DMX) equipment is insane. Some lamps, rigs or controllers are so expensive that shows only rent them. While there's lots of cases where you don't want to cut costs¹, quite often a cheap variant cuts it just fine. So apparently there's a lot of Pie's, Arduinos, ESP32s and old androids used to handle stuff. Custom, hacked, duckt-taped solutions. All of them are certain a startup offering generic but cheap modules that engineers can customize, would be an instant hit. Especially if "service" can be bought with it.

Or a friend who installs (climate) control systems in (food)factories, who cludges together arduino's and some hacky web-interfaces, who is certain that the industry would love some "off the shelve" solutions that installers can build their own hardware- and user-interfaces on is a very much wanted product. The industry (in EU) is according to him, one built on "lock ins", where a factory starts off with AcmeInc controllers and then slowly Acme will start charging almost "extortion-fee" alike figures just to fix stuff on a sunday night.

Or, a friend who has a fruit farm with lot's of freezer-storage (running hundreds of KWs), whith whom I cludged together some Arduino's and home-automation to control the freezers to run when electricity is cheap or free. Stuff like this is available for consumers at reasonable prices, but the moment the Amperages go to industry-level, the costs explode. Where a simple remote controllable power-switch can cost €1000s. I'm certain that there's hundreds of thousands of small warehouses, supermarkets, traders, logistics that could save a few hundreds to thousands of €'s a year, by controlling their freezers, heaters, pumps, pressurizers, dryers and whatnots smarter with "turn key" modules built from generic low cost hardware.

--

¹ relevant: There's a lot of "Nobody Ever Got Fired for Buying IBM" behind it: if you go for the cheap €800 chinese knock-off and mid-show something starts failing, its your fault. But if that €10.000 controller starts failing, it's no-ones fault.

[kfse]

With respect to bowling alleys, for things like professional shows or food safety it's a bit more than "nobody got fired for buying IBM". The stuff's gotta be able to survive field conditions and not cost millions of dollars in refunded show tickets or spoiled foods. Manufacturers test and make themselves accountable for this. Cheap, customized modules work until they don't, and by then the engineer who put the custom system together in the first place isn't there to fix them. Who would you call when some quick-and-dirty integration code that was burned into these embedded modules without ever being put in a source versioning system fails in some weird edge condition? OP is an SRE, it's ok for him, but the average farmer or show operator doesn't have the skill.

[torginus]

Just because a guy wears a fitted suit doesn't mean he'll be good at handling your money. Likewise if you buy tens of thousands of euros worth of incredibly overbuilt teutonic industrial equipment in matching colors and snap-in cabinets doesn't mean the guy who builds the PLC program in ladder logic will be any good at it - or that the next guy will have an easier time troubleshooting it than if the whole thing ran on an Arduino scavenged out of an intro to robotics kit.

Experts know there is stuff worth spending on, and there's stuff like the ESP32 where no amount of money will buy you something better, and no amount of money will save you, if the guy building the whole thing is an idiot.

[berkes]

And also, there's certainly places and situations where you do want to spend tens of thousands on PLCs, buttons and wiring.

But not all of it needs this level, quality or insurance. A factory, farm, supermarket, stage, etc, is filled with tech. Many of it critical for operation, but just as many is non-critical. And either this "non critical" must then be acquired with the same level of quality, insurance and costs as the critical. Or it's simply not available - likely because there's no demand for it at this price point.

[berkes]

> be able to survive field conditions

you are right. But my point was that not all of needs to survive the same conditions.

E.g. in a theater, you want the high class industry grade rigs for the main lightning when you are running the shows. But during rehearsals, or during the development of the stage (which is somewhat iterative by nature), custom made stuff suffices.

And this is where currently, custom made stuff is deployed. Stage technicians use a remarkable lot of intermediate, custom made hard and software. Some 3d printed valve to find out if the idea of the valve works at all, before ordering a CNC aluminium version. Some arduino before ordering that €2k/month controller to find out if the separate controller is needed at all.

This allows a show to prototype and experiment before they order the €20k water-spraying system. Or allows them to rehearse for months without paying €5k a month for the high class lightning rigs and only rent those for the actual setup.

Its the same with my other examples. They fill a niche. They don't replace the entire existing market.

> the average farmer or show operator doesn't have the skill

Exactly! That's why there's an opportunity here. "We" software engineers tend to build a rediculous amount of SAAS that are aimed at other software-engineers, because that's were we notice the problems and opportunities. My advice always, is to look beyond your bubble. The examples above are real-life examples where currently "farmers", "show operators" and "fitter" already are cludging together solutions to solve their problems. IMO there's no better proof that this is a problem to research as potential tech startup, than non-techies cludging together tech to solve their problems.

[bashkiddie]

> but they tend to be one-offs that aren't worth the time

Friend of mine used to retrofit CNC machines. He's left the business, because the machines that can be serviced moved to poor countries - where customers tend not to pay him at all. The modern influx of CNC have some "intellectual property" protection and cannot be serviced.

[MisterTea]

I do retrofits and I'll just assume the equipment he was using didn't have an analog encoder option or was ignorant of such equipment (likely using some cheap hobby level CNC thing.) I've worked with a few motion control systems such as ACS and Aerotech and they provide inputs for just about every encoder type imaginable. I retrofitted a CNC with 1500W 90V servo motors with analog resolvers using an Aerotech system, zero mechanical upgrades.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

I'm going to forget some details, but he was not using hobby level CNC products. I still have a Kollmorgen AKD motion controller that he sent me as a test bench. Most of the old tools were using 0-10V sawtooth analog outputs for motor position and, IIRC, their preferred controllers didn't support that. The initial version of the box I made took that 0-10V and pretended to be a resolver so the AKD could control the motor.

Like I said, I don't remember all his design decisions, but they wanted to retain the original position sensors.

[MisterTea]

Ah, that sounds like something really weird then. Haven't seen 0-10V sawtooth signals for encoder output though Ive seen 0-10V for laser infarometers and other distance sensors.