Virtual Dynamixel

[billyzelsnack]

I wanted to control my robot from the keyboard. I already have a homemade dynamixel interface working and I figured I could have my PC emulate a dynamixel.

It works. Inside Roboplus Task I load a value from a custom device. I can now drive my humanoid around using WASD!

However.. I get a lot of packet errors according to the Task output.

I'm wondering if anyone else has done this and squeazed out decent performance. I'm guessing it might not really be possible due to the PC not being very IO realtime friendly, but I'd be happy to find out something is just broken in my code. I'll post the code in day or so once I've cleaned it up.

[billyzelsnack]

I put the source up here..

http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=e01a ... d2eb488dac

It's just quickly hacked up dynamixel code to test out the concept so nothing special.

[billyzelsnack]

phpBB [media]

[limor]

Sorry for being thick but i don't follow what you are trying to do..
- control the robot from a keyboard
- WASD = keys on keyboard w,a,s,d ?
- home made dynamixel interface - what interface?
- PC emulating a dynamixel
- voice control

[billyzelsnack]

haha. It's hard to hold the camera and do something else. Some day my robots will be far enough along to hold the camera for me!

Basically.. My computer is sitting on the dynamixel bus and is available for the CM-5 to read commands off of. Currently the computer is just filling its dynamixel table slot with the latest keyboard key.

Not voice control. I'm just talking because it's hard to film it. Though.. I'm sure if I really wanted to I could find some open-source voice control and make it work in an hour or so. haha.

I'm thinking that I might build this proper. Just an AVR that talks to the dynamixel bus realtime, but has its table filled sub-realtime via USB.

oh.. "home made interface" is that thing hanging off the robot's back. It's basically just Arnaud's USB interface.

[limor]

thanks for explaining
the idea of adding a keyboard on the dynamixel bus or some other computer controled element is interesting especially in the context of my new found $35 friend.