I’ve been looking at the Robonova-1 and the KHR-1 specs. Robonova will have what they call a “catch and play” firmware. It seems that the KHR-1 bots have something similar. Supposedly, they position the robot, and click on a button to capture the positions of the servos. Then you move the bot to a new position and again capture the positions, and the firmware will smoothly transition between the positions.
My question is: will this type of interface be available in the new sequencer for the SSC-32? If not, is this a future project? And if so, what hardware will it be available on, and around when can we expect it?
Sorry for all the questions, but I feel that we would all benefit greatly from such a program.
That feature will not be available immediately. The SSC-32, although incredibly inexpensive, doesn’t have bidirectional I/O pins. We are working on another controller that will have this capability, but it will cost more. When we have the controller we will add the functionality to the Sequencer software.
The microcontrollers Hitec is offering for the Robonova are not cheap. The 24 channel one is $249.99 and the 32 channel one is $299.99. These are the Hitec MAP (minimum advertised pricing) policy prices.
It is still not clear if Hitec plans to release the real communication protocol. Because they are also providing the RoboBasic software that actually talks to the servos it isn’t required to know the serial protocol, and they may not release it. We will see…
We added a Robonova-1 category to the forum.
If I understand this correctly…
You could not physically move a servo to a position and then capture that position, but you could move a servo to a position through the software and then save that position, then move the servo to another position through software and save that position, then reply the captured sequence.
Instead of physically moving the servo to position you would use a slider in the software. All it would take is saving the currently output pulse widths at each location and then resending that sequence of pulse widths.
Not quite the same thing, but it is a way to get there with the current SSC32 functionality.
Yea, this bothered me too, when I saw it. But, both the picture and the caption seem to say that you actually can position the bot and have the software read it’s position. Don’t take my word for it, though. You can find the pic and caption that I was referring to at hitecrobotics.com/robonova/howitworks.htm
Perhaps this is possible because of those magical I/O pins…? 
Well, I was talking about with the SSC-32. It IS possible to position a servo and read the position if you have access to the signal from the pot in the servo. The SSC-32 does not so I was providing a way to do something similar with the SSC-32 and SEQ software without modifying the servos.
I don’t know about the HiTec version but the Kondo servos (KHR-1)
have two way communication over the pulse line of the servo. The controller pulses in the same manner as usual to set the position, then the servo pulses back the reading from the pot. I think for one reason or another this data is only available in the heart to heart software, but not when using the API. Seems like that’s probably a software limitation though and one that may be fixed in the future.
The only way to get that information out of the standard (read: cheap) servos is attach a lead onto the potentiometers and use an A/D on it. It’s really not that bad. I did it on all 18 servos on my hex.