Bioloid-Dynamixel bus cable pinout / connector type

[PedroR]

Hi all

For all those who don't know me my name is Pedro and I've come to work with Robosavvy and Limor a few months ago.

I am usually active on the Robobuilder forum but today I seek the expert assistance of the Biolid forum

I have been in touch the manufacturers of this x86 robot board: http://robosavvy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3401

I am trying to get them to ship the board with a couple of adapter cables for Biolid and Robobuilder bus.

1)
However, I need to know what is the pinout for the connectors of the Bioloid Servo bus.
I would also need to know which is the type/model of connector used so I can forward the info to the guys at DMP (the manufacturer).

2)
I also have a couple of questions about fusing RX and TX. If you could have a look at the posts and give me a hint I would greatly appreciate.
The idea is to connect the board directly to the Dynamixel bus because it has COM ports that work at TTL level.

- COM3 is full duplex TTL level and has separate RX and TX.

- There is also COM4 which is full duplex and already has RX and TX fused.

For some reason the guys at DMP say they didn't manage to get it working with Bioloid so for now, my best bet is fusing RX and TX on COM3.

However I am reluctant to do so as I don't know if this can be safely done...

I hope you can direct me to this information!

Best Regards
Pedro.

[siempre.aprendiendo]

It sounds pretty interesting, Pedro

"Compiling" some information around Robosavvy and Jon Hylands knowledge and wiki about Bioloid

1) For the connectors of the Bioloid Servo bus: here for some photos, code and URLs to Digikey. And here, two other providers , Comrad and Farnell.

2) About shorting the RX and TX and tristate: here and here, specially the answers from Jon Hylands

The pin out it's documented in AX12+ user's manual:



Hope it helps...

[PedroR]

Thanks a lot for the info.

It's very thorough and complete.

iBot also kindly posted some info on connecting the Bioloid to the COM ports available on the Roboard (here http://robosavvy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=19471#19471)

To test his suggestion I would need some documentation/sample code with simple packet instructions such as Moving a Servo to a certain position and Reading its current position.
Could you point me to that please?

This should be easy enough to implement and test on the board's COM4 using the RTS trick iBot suggested to make sure it works as expected.

I would really like to see the board coming together as a nice replacement board for the native CM5, RBC, etc. so we can further add "brain power" to our robots
of the numerous possibilities the one I'm currently most fond of is developing vision using a USB webcam...
Anyway, back to the current stage, could please point to some basic info on the protocol please?

Cheers
Pedro

[siempre.aprendiendo]

There are several examples in USB2Dynamixel Software v1.01 Robotis "SDK":

- Dynamixel Manager.exe : Dynamixel Manager Program Execution File
- Dynamixel SDK(U2D win32).html : Dynamixel Manager Manual
- Examples : Example Source Folder:

java
labview
matlab
python
visual basic
visual c#
visual c++