RoboSavvy Forum

Behavior Control. Internals.

2007-01-11T15:07:38+01:00

yeah. Talking with the manage mode interpreter is possible, but is incredibly inefficient because you can't turn off the echo (as far as I know).

Statistics: Posted by billyzelsnack — Thu Jan 11, 2007 3:07 pm

Behavior Control. Internals.

2007-01-11T08:34:58+01:00

You don't need any encoding to communicate through the serial cable. Just use plain ASCII commands, for example:

ID 13
WR 30 0 2
etc
etc

For a full listing of commands see the Robot Terminal Prgram, and use the HELP command.

Please note that using terminal commands you cannot communicate with a BCP program that is running inside the CM5. You communicate with the firmware program itself.

Statistics: Posted by inaki — Thu Jan 11, 2007 8:34 am

Behavior Control. Internals.

2007-01-11T04:49:33+01:00

Not looking good at this point. I can see data from the cm-5 in my terminal, but I'm not having any luck with the cm-5 seeing data from the terminal while I am playing a program. My program just turns on the aux light when some data is ready. I can use the up/down buttons to toggle it so I know the program is actually running.

I tried sending some numbers encoded like in your doc and that didn't do any good either.

The funny thing is that the RXD will light up when I am not playing a program, so data is being received at the cm-5. It seems that the play program just ignores it.

I am thinking that I might have to send some sort of packet header or something or it just might not be possible without tapping it at those pins.

I think it is time to do some more snooping on their programs!

btw. One of my goals is to make something that anyone can use without having to mod the hardware or do any non-usual bootloader uploading. Just upload a special behavior program and run a fancy new app to talk to it live.

Statistics: Posted by billyzelsnack — Thu Jan 11, 2007 4:49 am

Behavior Control. Internals.

2007-01-10T23:21:36+01:00

Cool thanks. I hope that..

RX REMOCON DATA ARRIVE

works from the normal serial cable. With that I should be able to do what I want.

Statistics: Posted by billyzelsnack — Wed Jan 10, 2007 11:21 pm

Behavior Control. Internals.

2007-01-10T22:47:29+01:00

The BCP has functions to recieve data via a wireless communications port in a packeted format. Details of the packet format are in the bluetooth hack doc:

http://robosavvy.com/Builders/Pev/Bioloid%20BlueTooth%20Hack.pdf

I use this with a bluetooth module to control my 'loid

Pev

Statistics: Posted by Pev — Wed Jan 10, 2007 10:47 pm

Behavior Control. Internals.

2007-01-10T21:48:50+01:00

So do you mean to write a little program in the behavior editor that'll basically make up a little command set that it'll listen for. Is there a behavior editor command that can read and write from serial? hmm.

Statistics: Posted by billyzelsnack — Wed Jan 10, 2007 9:48 pm

Behavior Control. Internals.

2007-01-10T19:55:18+01:00

Where do I find info on the remote controller api?

Statistics: Posted by billyzelsnack — Wed Jan 10, 2007 7:55 pm

Behavior Control. Internals.

2007-01-10T19:35:30+01:00

If you just want to control the Bioloid with C you can use the remote controller API that is ASCII based. You don't need tokens. Actually any program that is able to send ASCII strings can control the Bioloid using these commands.

Statistics: Posted by inaki — Wed Jan 10, 2007 7:35 pm

Behavior Control. Internals.

2007-01-10T16:52:19+01:00

Well. I'll go ahead with the project then and see what I can do with it. My goal is to create a bare minimum C api that lets me control/read the servos. I'll post a demo along with the source to everything once/if I get somewhere with it.

Statistics: Posted by billyzelsnack — Wed Jan 10, 2007 4:52 pm

Behavior Control. Internals.

2007-01-10T08:40:21+01:00

I got stuck at the very end of the project. I was able to convert a program to tokens and save it to CM5 but was unable to put the CM5 in PLAY mode again, except using the buttons!
Something weird occurs when uploading the programs. This may or may not be your problem. I did not find the root of the problem however.

Lately I have been working with alternative programming languages so I have not paid more atention to the tokenizer.

Statistics: Posted by inaki — Wed Jan 10, 2007 8:40 am

Behavior Control. Internals.

2007-01-10T07:22:20+01:00

Did you get any further with this? I am thinking of writing a little C api to simplify doing just this. Any reason why I should rethink that plan?

inaki wrote:
Yes, I am talking about boot mode. Behavior Control(BC) loads a block of bytes directly to CM5 memory with the command LOAD. To achieve this BC enters boot mode (the same boot mode you enter when presing the # key under Robot Terminal; it actually does the same!). The bytes loaded at the address specificed are the commands you write in BC but tokenized, i.e., converted to codes. Each command is represented by a code plus its parameters.

So for example to send the sequence
START
LOAD DX17,30,1
END
is converted to (simplified a bit):

*** ; Starts a command
########## ;Enters Boot Mode
LD A000 ; select address for loading
0D
04 ; START
06; LOAD
17; Servo ID
30; Register
1; value for this register
05 ;END
*** ;end command

So you might use any utility to upload programs to CM5 writen in any way you want, be it an script, a VB program or a C program. Of course you would need to convert the commands to tokens before sending them.

I am talking here about writing programs the way BC does but without using BC.

I am afraid I don't get your idea of scripting here. May you ellaborate about your scripting idea ?

Statistics: Posted by billyzelsnack — Wed Jan 10, 2007 7:22 am

Behavior Control. Internals.

2006-05-25T19:41:19+01:00

inaki wrote:
But I would like to write programs without the BC interface. I am working now hacking the list of tokens. I will post my findings here when I get the whole list.

YES PLEASE continue working on this! The GUI is so slooow for those of us who can type. The GUI also makes it difficult to manage programs longer than a couple of screens full, especially if there are a bunch of subroutines involved.

Steve

Statistics: Posted by stevo3d — Thu May 25, 2006 7:41 pm

Behavior Control. Internals.

2006-05-25T13:17:37+01:00

inaki wrote:
The Robot Terminal is nothing more than a simple terminal Program. You can do the same with any terminal program. Try with Hyperterminal for example.

Thank you very much for helping an unexperienced user! I've got so much to learn ...

Of course I didn't hesitate to try and use Hyperterminal (1999 edition). It would be a slight advantage if it works - mainly because of copy/paste and recording functions. O.k., it works somehow but I couldn't achieve real stable conditions. I tried the bunch of parameters and had the best results with VT100 emulation (leaving the rest in standard conditions), but the window stays to small and the output/input fields of the CM-5 operating progam are shifted to wrong positions.

Nevertheless, thanks for your explanation. Maybe I'll have a try with some other terminal program.

Statistics: Posted by barbar — Thu May 25, 2006 1:17 pm

Behavior Control. Internals.

2006-05-25T09:30:52+01:00

inaki wrote:
Behavior Control is another matter. I think it is good enough for what it is intended. But I would like to write programs without the BC interface. I am working now hacking the list of tokens. I will post my findings here when I get the whole list.

I agree that a method to write behaviour control programs without hte GUI would be a huge improvement. And as inaki says once we have the token list the process of developing an interface is realatively easy, especially with the Visual Sudio 2005 serialport class. For me this would be the biggest improvement........

Statistics: Posted by Pev — Thu May 25, 2006 9:30 am

Behavior Control. Internals.

2006-05-25T09:05:50+01:00

The Robot Terminal is nothing more than a simple terminal Program. You can do the same with any terminal program. Try with Hyperterminal for example. The only thing it does is sending and receiving strings.
So emulating the Robot Terminal commands should be easy with any program. The only concern here is speed. For example, if you want to test a parameter you need to read it then compare with some value and then write the result. All using strings. It would be probably slow but it migh worth the truble to write a small program and test it because it is easy to do.

Behavior Control is another matter. I think it is good enough for what it is intended. But I would like to write programs without the BC interface. I am working now hacking the list of tokens. I will post my findings here when I get the whole list.

Of course, the BC source code would help a lot !

Statistics: Posted by inaki — Thu May 25, 2006 9:05 am