I’m gonna use many motors in my project and I want it all still be controlled with 1 Joystick, is it possible to connect 3 bot boards together?
how does it work exactly?
hmmm, if there is a way i dont know how to do it, you can always hook the motors up in pairs to bring down the number of motor controller pins needed
how many motors are you using exactky, what kind are they, and what is the project going to do?
As I said in the other topic:
Sure, you can. Youl need to take up 6 pins on each one though… But its possible. Just connect 2 pins on each board to each other. Then use SEROUT (i believe) to send data to the other board. The other board will poll for info and it will then parse it. I am not sure mbasic is able to parse the way you may need but this is all possible.
You can for example have one board control motors, one for sensors, and one for main processing…
Pretend you have 5 sensors. 0x00 - 0x05 You can set it up so the main board can send “0x04” to request the value of 4th sensor followed by a END or like a 0xFF. Then the sensor board will respon with an ACK 0xFE for example and the value of sensor, followed by 0xFF to tell the main board transmission is over.
I personally would recommend getting PIC micros. They are far cheaper to work in quantities. They are about $5-10 per unit and you need a single $20-50 programmer. PICs also have interrupts which can be used to store values into a buffer so you dont need to poll. polling is when the micro just sits there and waits for a reply from the other micros.
Hope this helps 
If you have any questions, feel free to ask.
-robodude666
BTW, don’t post a topic twice. Its called spamming.
Also, if you want more i/o pins… you can get an i2c device to extend the number of i/o pins you have. Not sure if the atom has i2c support though.
Beth, delete the other thread since this topic is more about the Atom than it is general discussion.
thanks alot!
Sorry again for spamming
I didn’t understand, what do you mean pins? you’re talking about 2 I/Os?
I’m sorry for the newbie questions…
yes, its the boards I/O’s
We need to know what motor controller you are wanting to use before we can talk about how many Bot Boards would be required. 
When you say motors, do you mean DC motors, or hobby servos? How much current do these motors draw? We have some new motor controllers that can control two motors with one I/O pin. The Bot Board has 16 I/O pins even with a PS2 controller attached. This would let you control 32 10 amp motors. Please provide more details. 
he can always double the motors up depending on how much they draw
SEROUT is not correct
accually its SHIFTOUT
In most internet situations (such as usenet news groups and such) it is refered to as “multi-posting”, which is generally viewed as a different situation than “spamming”.
My project is a bit too complex to explain in few lines of text, I can send my project outline if you are interested, my project is a snake robot made out of 3 links with approximately 10 motors on each link, total of 30.
I’m gonna use your Sabertooth drivers, I’m gonna buy around 15 of them, and I wanted to have 3 bot boards, 1 for each link. I have plenty of other questions for you, Jim, I’m ordering all the parts in 3 weeks.
Thank you very much for your help.
P.S. I sent you some questions before, I’ll be happy to discuss the more specific issues via email.