new controller coming together, update...

[JonHylands]

I got the cameras (I ordered 2) last week , they seem very, very cool I think it took about a week to get them all the way over here (to Finland).

I did the wirering for my controller yesterday, I'll probably try to code the protocol this weekend.

Note that you can boost the speed of the communications with the camera way above the 115K documented in the manual. If you set both timing values to 1, it will run at 921K...

- Jon

[JonHylands]

I just today got a couple of AX-12 servos in the mail, so once I get my hardware harness together, I will post the results of trying to get my gumstix to talk to the AX-12 bus through the robostix...

- Jon

[JonHylands]

Well, I have success.

I have run a program on my gumstix, that talks to the Bioloid bus (and a single servo) to both ping the servo, and go through a sequence of moving the servo arm.

I'm going to talk to my brother about posting the code for the robostix - he has marked the source as dual-licensed as either GPL or BSD, so I don't imagine it will be a problem.

To update - the gumstix is talking to the robostix over the 115,200 baud serial port, and the robostix is talking to the Bioloid bus at 1 Mbps (using the other hardware UART). With this setup, you don't need any external hardware from the robostix - the Tx and Rx pins on the robostix can be tied together to the Bioloid bus line.

- Jon

[Joe]

I have run a program on my gumstix, that talks to the Bioloid bus (and a single servo) to both ping the servo, and go through a sequence of moving the servo arm.

Great work, Jon! You should consider writing an article for Servo magazine (and letting me proof-read it for you ).

Best,
— Joe