Bioloid questions

[Paradigm]

Finally a place to ask lots of irritating questions about this kit I've had a look around and it seems some of them have been asked before, but I've got a few additions.

I started out with the LEGO mindstorms kit, but motors/sensors rather quickly became an annoying limit, without paying for more RCX bricks (or doing hardware hacking, which I'd like to avoid). Also the RCX had a few annoying software limits. I used NQC and never actually installed LEGO's own software, and was still limited in terms of the amount of variables and memory.

When I first saw the bioloid kit, it gave me hope that I could overcome these limits. I'm really interested in getting the big kit (or possibly 2) for some advanced playing around (thats a technical term I believe)

1. I understand its possible to change servo IDs and thereby attach more servos than there are in the big kit. I assume adding more power won't be a problem, but has any of you found a limit in terms of bandwidth?

2. Along with rotation sensors in the servos, do they also automatically respond to obstacles, so you can cease operation if there is something blocking further rotation, and send a signal back to the controller? Basically eliminating the need for "touch" sensors.

3. I am not interested in using the supplied software for creating motion, etc, but rather want to do my own programming. Is the programming environment a full C language, or are there any annoying limits along the lines of the LEGO RCX?

4. The LEGO RCX had one nice thing, threads, is this kind of functionality supported in the Bioloid software?

5. I would like to do my programming in Linux. Is it possible to compile and upload programs from this OS? Are there anyone who "hacked" the kit along the lines of the NQC for the LEGO RCX?

-Martin
Denmark

[limor]

1. I understand its possible to change servo IDs and thereby attach more servos than there are in the big kit. I assume adding more power won't be a problem, but has any of you found a limit in terms of bandwidth?

RS485 allows you to put theoretically 100s of objects on the bus; including Robotis servos and sensors.

2. Along with rotation sensors in the servos, do they also automatically respond to obstacles, so you can cease operation if there is something blocking further rotation, and send a signal back to the controller? Basically eliminating the need for "touch" sensors.

you can write a program that will look for drastic change in current consumption on a servo. Current and torque are sometimes linearly related. Not sure about the relationship between current consumption and torque with the AX12 servos but if all you are looking for is obstruction, then you will see a current surge on the effected servos.

3. I am not interested in using the supplied software for creating motion, etc, but rather want to do my own programming. Is the programming environment a full C language, or are there any annoying limits along the lines of the LEGO RCX?

Boiloid has a Atmega128 processor. you can run gnu compiler and cross-compile your C code (see http://www.avrfreaks.org ).

4. The LEGO RCX had one nice thing, threads, is this kind of functionality supported in the Bioloid software?

Multithreading with microcontrollers is usually an illusion that comes at the expense of hidden computation cycles..