I will finally get the picaxe usb cable I need to program the motor driver. I've been looking at the AtMega8s as the next step for the Motor Driver Board, it has plenty of PWM pins and such. It's typical of research, it starts off in one direction and then veers off to somewhere else. To fully utilize it, I'd have to use 12 digital I/O.
The new cable works great, lesson learned, get the real thing and don't get a clone. Ah well, I'll still get stuff at SF just not that lol.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Spending time researching
If you haven't read
If you have built a few robots, you know the frustration of wanting it to be able to do different things, but don't have the knowledge to do it. This book goes into the decision making, types of behaviors and combing simple behaviors to make complex ones. Overall, it's a good informative read that would not put you to sleep.
In a few days, I'll be able to finish up the motor board. One of the reasons I'm not going to put a the stepper portion in is, because if I do that there isn't any room for the nap function or any of the error codes, function codes. I could crank things down a bit more than I have, but still would run into a memory problem. I could go with an ATmega 168, but that would be proc overkill. It'd give me all the PWMs, Analong pins and digital I/O I'd need to do it all from that chip, but not viable unless I can find a cheaper source for them.
If you have built a few robots, you know the frustration of wanting it to be able to do different things, but don't have the knowledge to do it. This book goes into the decision making, types of behaviors and combing simple behaviors to make complex ones. Overall, it's a good informative read that would not put you to sleep.
In a few days, I'll be able to finish up the motor board. One of the reasons I'm not going to put a the stepper portion in is, because if I do that there isn't any room for the nap function or any of the error codes, function codes. I could crank things down a bit more than I have, but still would run into a memory problem. I could go with an ATmega 168, but that would be proc overkill. It'd give me all the PWMs, Analong pins and digital I/O I'd need to do it all from that chip, but not viable unless I can find a cheaper source for them.
Friday, January 8, 2010
Long Time No Blog
Well, it's been two months to the day that I last posted a blog. A lot has been happening in my life in that time, just nothing in the realm of my hobby life of not has been happening. I have all the parts for the Motor Control Board(MCB) and it's partially assembled, just waiting on the programming cable to come in the mail next week. Yes, I had to relearn a lesson, don't try to cut corners with bad clones. Clones are like copies, neither are as good as the real thing.
One thing I did cut out of the MCB was the servo control part, because all that is needed to run servos is microcontroller itself. All the other chips would be a waste of space, power and money to control a bunch of servos. So, the MCB will be able to control 4 DC motors or two bipolar stepper motors. Because I'm use a PIC, it will only have two PWMs though, I haven't decided to use one PWM for each L293D or use both PWMs on both chips, probably the later. I'd thought about using two PICs, but that would be a bit of overkill and increase the cost and size of the board.
I have ordered a PicAxe 8M and protoboard along with the correct and non-clone programming cable.
One thing I did cut out of the MCB was the servo control part, because all that is needed to run servos is microcontroller itself. All the other chips would be a waste of space, power and money to control a bunch of servos. So, the MCB will be able to control 4 DC motors or two bipolar stepper motors. Because I'm use a PIC, it will only have two PWMs though, I haven't decided to use one PWM for each L293D or use both PWMs on both chips, probably the later. I'd thought about using two PICs, but that would be a bit of overkill and increase the cost and size of the board.
I have ordered a PicAxe 8M and protoboard along with the correct and non-clone programming cable.
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