Newbie Question - Tilt, Accelerometer, Gyro???

[Orsky]

Apologies if this is a really dumb question. I would like to build an RN1 that will not topple over and if it does it should be able to pick itself up. I've been poking around the forum and am now more confused than when I began. It appears to me that all the aforementioned devices will provide some soft of solution. Do I need all of them, one of them, a pair them etc and what are the benefits of each?

Thanks in advance and I hope this doesnt sound too noddy.

Cheers

Tony

[hivemind]

Accelerometer measures gravity+outside forces (so it will measure which way your robot is tilted and perform the task you seem to want). The gyro measures rate of change. I have both in my bot because they are both handy.

I use the accelerometer to help stand up or balance with slow movements, and the gyro to help stabilize faster movements.

-Hive

[Pev]

I was working on a new controller recently and disconnected my gyro. You forget how much these things help........

I'd say both gyros and accelerometers have their place although I just use a gyro at the moment

Pev

[mthomson]

I'll chime in with another noob question about this.

How do you tie in the gyro to the controller and what code needs to be added or changed?

thanks,
mark

[i-Bot]

I think you are interested in the software connections rather than hardware. There are examples of the hardware connections available. in other posts

For the software part the gyro code is integral to the motion engine within the RoboNova firmware. When Gyros are enables they are read every 16 ms. The result from the Gyro is used to effect the servos based on the values you set in the Gyroset (type and no of Gyro), Gyrodir(direction of effect), and Gyrosense( degree of effect). There is no program access to the Gyro outputs unless you peek the memory locations containing the readings. Thus gyro operation after setup is autonomous of the robobasic generated code.

Accelerometers need to be connected to analog inputs and are read by Robobasic generated code. This is slower, and there is no direct control of the servos.