IMU Boards Available

[JonHylands]

Hi everyone,

Well, after a lot of pain (I spent most of July fighting pneumonia), my simple website is up, and I'm ready to start selling some boards.

You can see what I have available here:

http://www.huvrobotics.com

I will be putting up a real store soon enough, but this will have to do for now.

We've worked out a deal where RoboSavvy is going to become my exclusive European distributor for the IMU boards to start with. The boards should be available from RoboSavvy in about three weeks.

If you're a non-European customer, please contact me directly (see the email address on the site) if you want to buy one of these products.

Note that right now I do not have a large supply of any of these boards made up, so if you do order, it will get shipped after I have the boards populated and tested.

Thanks,
Jon

[Bullit]

Very nice work Jon! on both the IMU and the website

[Dewey]

Great news Jon.

Really appreciate you making the products of your research available to us all.

With the sort of sensors you are producing Walking rather than Stumbling becomes possible!

Dewey

[BillB]

Great news and well done - it adds huge potential to the Bioloid.

[StuartL]

I'm going to be in Fernie, BC late January/early February next year. What's the international shipping like to the UK for an IMU setup? What's needed in addition to the cheap base board for the full 6 axis IMU?

This is a great contribution to the community and it's only right that you should be financially rewarded for your hard work

[JonHylands]

I'm going to be in Fernie, BC late January/early February next year. What's the international shipping like to the UK for an IMU setup? What's needed in addition to the cheap base board for the full 6 axis IMU?

Shipping to BC (3 days) is $20. Shipping to the UK (6 days) is $55.

You can buy the two sensor boards from RoboSavvy here - there are links to the Sparkfun pages for each on the description page of the IMU.

Note that by sometime next month, Limor will be my European distributor, and will have the IMU in stock, so you will be able to buy directly from him.

This is a great contribution to the community and it's only right that you should be financially rewarded for your hard work

Thanks. The amount of money I'm charging basically covers material and some of my time in assembling these boards. If I was charge what they actually cost me in time, the price would be a lot higher...

- Jon

[cdraptor]

You cannot pass up this deal if you have some AX-12s hanging around. I've been messing much more lately with the electronics interfacing the gumstix to the Lynxmotion SSC-32 board which has been a fun project. So I gotta give Jon credit for selling these at the prices he is. I know they'll be good support since Jon is so active on the boards and is always sharing information and advice.

Now I gotta get the Verdex gumstix board and the Breakout or Console to connect the mini-USB to what looks like the full size USB on Jon's board. Hey Jon - any ideas on where you can get a short mini-USB to regular USB cable that's like 4 - 6 inches long. I know gumstix is coming out with a WiFi board which hopefully they have a mini-USB on that.

Everyone with AX-12s need to buy one, I would like to motivate Jon to create more cool stuff to use on the board. I am having fun with the electronics and I have been playing with different things on the breadboard, but I'm horrible at soldering so most of my experiments I get working on a big clumsy breadboard and that's as far as they get, gotta respect the work Jon is doing.

Oh and he didn't pay me to say any of this

[Juha]

Nice work (again) Jon. Hope you're feeling better now.

BTW, have you considered to take this a bit further, and make a general i/o module for the bioloid bus?

I mean, this is something which I've been thinking about, but my project is advancing quite slowly right now.. main reason being, that our daughter was born on xmas day. Right now the goal is to get my bioloid walking with my new controller before our daughter starts walking

Let say you had a AT Tiny/Mega with general digital/analog i/o pins.

You could have a registry on the EEPROM, like you have now, which would be used to configure how these general i/o pins are used. Like digital input, digital output, analog input, analog output, perhaps even PWM and so on (depending on the chip used).

Then on the ram you’d have addresses where you could either read or write the values.

This should not be too difficult, like I said I’ve been thinking about it myself, but you’re really already halfway there You have already build the communication protocol etc for avr.

Cheers,

Juha

[JonHylands]

cdraptor:

http://gumstix.com/store/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=28&products_id=187

I use a normal USB to mini-B cable, which plugs into the gumstix accessory board usb plugs directly. One of the above plugged into the other end gives me a female A plug which I can plug any standard USB device into.

For real stuff, I build my own cables with plug parts from Digikey.

And thanks for the words of praise - I appreciate it.

Juha: Actually, it looks like I'm having a bit of a relapse, but I'm seeing the doctor this morning, so perhaps I can catch it earlier this time.

I have a general I/O board I have done, although its all DIP, so its kind of big.

http://www.huv.com/blog/2007/07/catching-up.html



It has 6 analog inputs, 4 digital I/O's, and two PWM channels with direction pins. The control table for that one looks like this (from the .h file):

#define CONTROL_ADC_0_LOW 26
#define CONTROL_ADC_0_HIGH 27
#define CONTROL_ADC_1_LOW 28
#define CONTROL_ADC_1_HIGH 29
#define CONTROL_ADC_2_LOW 30
#define CONTROL_ADC_2_HIGH 31
#define CONTROL_ADC_3_LOW 32
#define CONTROL_ADC_3_HIGH 33
#define CONTROL_ADC_4_LOW 34
#define CONTROL_ADC_4_HIGH 35
#define CONTROL_ADC_5_LOW 36
#define CONTROL_ADC_5_HIGH 37

#define CONTROL_DIGITAL_0_DIR 38
#define CONTROL_DIGITAL_0 39

#define CONTROL_DIGITAL_1_DIR 40
#define CONTROL_DIGITAL_1 41

#define CONTROL_DIGITAL_2_DIR 42
#define CONTROL_DIGITAL_2 43

#define CONTROL_DIGITAL_3_DIR 44
#define CONTROL_DIGITAL_3 45

#define CONTROL_MOTOR_A_SPEED_LOW 46
#define CONTROL_MOTOR_A_SPEED_HIGH 47

#define CONTROL_MOTOR_B_SPEED_LOW 48
#define CONTROL_MOTOR_B_SPEED_HIGH 49

I posted a note about this board a few weeks ago, and nobody said a word, so I assumed there wasn't any interest. I plan on making something like it into a product, but its just another thing on a long list of stuff to get done.

- Jon

[Juha]

Juha: Actually, it looks like I'm having a bit of a relapse, but I'm seeing the doctor this morning, so perhaps I can catch it earlier this time.

Sorry to hear that, hope you get better soon.

I have a general I/O board I have done, although its all DIP, so its kind of big.
.
.
I posted a note about this board a few weeks ago, and nobody said a word, so I assumed there wasn't any interest. I plan on making something like it into a product, but its just another thing on a long list of stuff to get done.

But that's awesome Somehow I've totally missed your earlier post.

And thought that everyone is constantly crying to get general i/o for their bioloids?! To me your board seems excellent, only one question: Where can I get one (or two) ?

I have a dual axis gyro from sparkfun, which I haven't used at all yet. Any reasons why I could _not_ use your board with the this?

Do you have other pictures of the board explaining all the connectors? At the top of the picture you probably have 3 pins per analog input? What are these 3? Input, ground... and something else? Ref?

(okey, so I had more then one question...)

--Juha

[JonHylands]

And thought that everyone is constantly crying to get general i/o for their bioloids?! To me your board seems excellent, only one question: Where can I get one (or two) ?

I have a dual axis gyro from sparkfun, which I haven't used at all yet. Any reasons why I could _not_ use your board with the this?

Do you have other pictures of the board explaining all the connectors? At the top of the picture you probably have 3 pins per analog input? What are these 3? Input, ground... and something else? Ref?

Well, I have to get some more of that board made anyways, so I'll post a new specific message, seeing what kind of response I get.

The only issue with the 2-axis gyro is that it is a 3.3 volt part, and this board is set up to be 5 volts. However, since I'm running off the internal oscillator, and the voltage regulator is socketed, there's no reason you couldn't run the board at 3.3 volts simply by changing the voltage regulator.

The connectors are as follows:

The six 3-pin sockets at the top are analog inputs. Each 3-pin socket has analog in, power, and ground.

The four 3-pin sockets in the lower right are digital I/O's. Each 3-pin socket as digital in/out, power, and ground.

The five-pin connector immediately to the left of the Digital I/O's is the motor drive, which has two PWM pins, two direction pins, and ground. It is set up for doing sign magnitude PWM.

The six-pin header in the upper right is of course the programming header. There are two Bioloid bus connectors, and a jumper for the Tx/Rx pins (in case you want to turn this into a receive-only board. The LED is hooked up like a normal Bioloid LED, controlled by register 25.

- Jon

[ShreddinPB]

Hey Guys..
I just wanted to chime in here. I ordered the full IMU from Jon. I payed for it on Aug. 30, and it got here today.. Sep 4th!! thats only 5 days.. 2 of which were weekend days, and one was a holiday, labor day. I am in Los Angeles, just in case you want to judge on distance.
I am very impressed at the speed it got here and the care in packaging.

Thanks Jon for making an awesome product, and for being so profesional and getting it here so fast!!

Now to figure out what I am doing so I can use it lol

[BillB]

I have also recieved the fully constructed IMU from Jon. Recieved within a week (despite being on a different continents).

It was very well packaged, a quaility built product. All I need to do now is roll up my sleves and figure out how to use it.

Bill

[JonHylands]

Thanks, I appreciate your responses. If you have any trouble with the device, please let me know...

- Jon

[BillB]

Do you have a link to any data sheets on the accelerometers & Gyros that you used.

I would like to know the range of acceleromenter values that I can expect. Is it 0-1024? Most of the time I get values that hover round the 250 mark (range of 160- 320). After a vigous shake the accelerometer values return although I recieve 91 and 389.

Bill