RoboSavvy Forum

General I/O Module - Any Interest?

2008-01-28T21:15:06+01:00

Okay, I've set up the wiki page for this:

http://www.bioloid.info/tiki/tiki-index ... l+IO+Board

If you have any comments on the documentation, or features that are missing, please let me know...

- Jon

Statistics: Posted by JonHylands — Mon Jan 28, 2008 9:15 pm

General I/O Module - Any Interest?

2008-01-25T21:40:33+01:00

So, after a long wait, I finally got around to getting a small order of these boards done...

http://robosavvy.com/Builders/JonHylands/SensorBoard-02.jpg

I have to do some work on the software, but you can expect to see these boards show up in my store in a couple weeks...

- Jon

Statistics: Posted by JonHylands — Fri Jan 25, 2008 9:40 pm

General I/O Module - Any Interest?

2007-08-27T12:21:50+01:00

No, the problem is the one-axis gyro from Analog Devices requires 5 volts to operate, and it produces values pretty much in the entire range.

- Jon

Statistics: Posted by JonHylands — Mon Aug 27, 2007 12:21 pm

General I/O Module - Any Interest?

2007-08-27T08:34:49+01:00

JonHylands wrote:
For the regulator, what I'm going to do is include both a 5 volt and a 3.3 volt regulator with each board. If you're doing something more complex, and mixing 3.3 and 5 volts, well, you're on your own for that. My IMU does that, and has two full voltage regulators on it.

But can't you run the whole board with 3.3? I'd imagine that the analog inputs are scale according to the operating voltage, so this would also give a better more accurate reading from the 0 to 3.3V output of the gyros?

-- Juha

Statistics: Posted by Juha — Mon Aug 27, 2007 8:34 am

General I/O Module - Any Interest?

2007-08-24T12:30:10+01:00

Juha,

It would be impossible to get it down to that size without switching over to surface mount technology. I'm planning on doing that already, but the timeline is uncertain. The whole point here is that I've already got this board designed and tested, and I wanted to see if anyone would find it useful more or less the way it is.

I agree with respect to the digital direction pins - I will move those into EEPROM. The board already has a status LED on it (controlled with control table entry #25). You can add a resistor-integrated LED to any of the digital ports by plugging in the LED to the first two pins of the digital connector (data and +5), and use the digital pin to switch ground.

For the regulator, what I'm going to do is include both a 5 volt and a 3.3 volt regulator with each board. If you're doing something more complex, and mixing 3.3 and 5 volts, well, you're on your own for that. My IMU does that, and has two full voltage regulators on it.

- Jon

Statistics: Posted by JonHylands — Fri Aug 24, 2007 12:30 pm

General I/O Module - Any Interest?

2007-08-24T10:47:14+01:00

Like I mentioned earlier, I'm interested.

Just a few thoughts , in case you’re planning on updating the design.

I’d imagine that most people want/need to add an additional board to this one, which might have connectors to gyros, buttons, leds etc, whatever they want to control.

So I was just thinking about the layout, right now it might be bit difficult to snap another board on top of this one. Perhaps, the connectors could be on the other side or something.

About the size of the board, I would be great if the width could be shrink to around 25mm etc, so that the area of the board would be around the same as ax-12 top/bottom. This way the board (with additional boards on top of it) could fit for example between the legs of a bioloid humanoid.

I was thinking about reading the values from the 2 axis gyro I have + adding 3 axis accelerometer, and maybe add a compass rather than one more gyro. Perhaps also turning some status lets on/off.

The direction of digital i/o is stored in the ram? It would be nice if this was stored in the permanent memory.

In the earlier post I also wondered about the possibility to configure the pins, if you needed more digital i/o you could set one of the analog pins to that type (if possible with the AVR chip in question).

You spoke about either doing a 3.3V version or leaving the regulator out , which sounds like a good idea. If you run the ATMega with 3.3V, this probably affects the analog input (10bits spread between 0 and 3.3V), digital i/o and the serial communication to the bioloid bus? ATMega’s RX pin does not mind if it gets a higher 5V voltage? (just to be sure)

The digital output can provide enough current to light a led, right?

I think I had something else I was meaning to ask you but I forgot… well, next time then. Anyway, nice work Jon, looking forward to getting one or more of these.

--Juha

Statistics: Posted by Juha — Fri Aug 24, 2007 10:47 am

General I/O Module - Any Interest?

2007-08-22T18:25:25+01:00

No, that would not work - it requires a serial port, and I haven't put serial support into this module.

- Jon

Statistics: Posted by JonHylands — Wed Aug 22, 2007 6:25 pm

General I/O Module - Any Interest?

2007-08-22T17:43:09+01:00

Jon - With this could I use the 'talk' hack for the RN-1, that was in Robot Magazine, for the Bioloid?

http://www.botmag.com/articles/01-18-06 ... peak.shtml

--Scotty

Statistics: Posted by srobot — Wed Aug 22, 2007 5:43 pm

General I/O Module - Any Interest?

2007-08-21T00:57:33+01:00

The IMU board is for a pair of specific Sparkfun sensor boards, which are described (and linked to) on the IMU-01 page:

http://www.huvrobotics.com/IMU-01.html

The I/O board described at the top of this thread is a much more general board, which can interface to arbitrary analog sensors, and even some digital sensors.

- Jon

Statistics: Posted by JonHylands — Tue Aug 21, 2007 12:57 am

General I/O Module - Any Interest?

2007-08-20T23:51:40+01:00

Well!

I forgot to ask if the SparkFun boards will work with this I/O board?

--Scotty

Statistics: Posted by srobot — Mon Aug 20, 2007 11:51 pm

General I/O Module - Any Interest?

2007-08-20T23:44:20+01:00

Also I forgot to say that with the IMUs you have to use 1 or 2 SparkFun IMU(s) like the "gyro" and/or "gyro/Accelerometer"?

Thanks,
--Scotty

Statistics: Posted by srobot — Mon Aug 20, 2007 11:44 pm

General I/O Module - Any Interest?

2007-08-20T23:35:47+01:00

Oh yeah, and I think I'll get one!

Statistics: Posted by srobot — Mon Aug 20, 2007 11:35 pm

General I/O Module - Any Interest?

2007-08-20T23:33:01+01:00

Jon - Can you describe what is the difference between the two boards?

From what I can see the IMU MUST use the sparkfun sensors, but these need only regular sensors. Is that right?

Statistics: Posted by srobot — Mon Aug 20, 2007 11:33 pm

General I/O Module - Any Interest?

2007-08-20T22:45:51+01:00

count me in

Statistics: Posted by ShreddinPB — Mon Aug 20, 2007 10:45 pm

General I/O Module - Any Interest?

2007-08-18T23:21:33+01:00

Hi! Excellent Work! I'll take one (at least).

Statistics: Posted by barbar — Sat Aug 18, 2007 11:21 pm