I have a couple of these ARC-32 boards. Info is trickling in. It’s going to need a little more work, but it looks really good so far.
There’s a USB port on it.
It’s got larger power terminals.
It’s based on the Atom Pro 40+, running at 20mhz.
It’s got 32 hardware servo channels.
There’s an AUX header with 6 I/O and power and ground on it.
There’s also a 4 x push button / LED header for adding a simple user interface.
Out of the 32 servo channels, 12 are either servo pulse generation or input only. The remaining 20 are full bidirectional I/O pins.
I see three dedicated LED’s on the board. batt, status, and power.
The three jumpers by the USB port are to allow it to be controlled by another TTL device.
32k eeprom too.
All in all it looks like a decent compromise with the large servo load and the small form factor of our other boards. It basically replaces the SSC-32, Bot Board II, and Atom Pro 28. It’s a work in progress. I will be testing some basic functionalities over the next week.
If this is a 'pro, then it’s a Renisys chip or what ever it is, not a PIC. MBasic, as far as I know, only works for PICs. It would be nice if MBasic worked for the dsPIC33F parts!
And of course MBasic requires its very own boot loader, and apparently one must buy the BM programmer just to program the bootloader.
I’m guessing this board has a chip with a 'pro bootloader.
As Robot Dude mentioned it is a combination SSC-32 and BB2 with a Atom Pro 40. So it runs 25% faster than the current Atom Pro 28s, uses the same compilers. Note: you download and use the same “Basic Micro Studio” for Atoms(pic), Atom Pros(H8), and Atom Nanos. Not sure what there plans are for updating the MBasic for other pics…
There is more hardware support added for controlling the 32 servos. Like the Pro40 I believe that it is based on the H8/3687. For many programs you will simply rebuild it. Somethings I know that are different include things like using the hardware timers (No TimerA but has TimerB1), No TimerW but has TimerZ with two channels…
I’m looking forward to try out and see what speed this can give Phoenix, or even better… TA (hint hint Xan )
The J4 and J5 are the aux ports and TTL connection?
And, I’m very happy to see there are two power connectors for all servos!
Not real sure but I think J4 is the 6 I/O AUX 90° header and J5 is the 4 Button/LED interface connector. Both headers have 6 pins so it could be either one I guess. There should have been a silk screen labled “AUX” for one of the two headers. It’s possible the production boards may have some changes made.
1 A/D capable pin on the AUX header. 16 servo pins are A/D capable. 3 battery connections are A/D monitored(1/3 voltage divider).
There are 4 QFN package muxes on the back of the board but they shouldn’t interfer any more than the through whole solder points.
At a glace specs:
44 total pins, 32 full I/Os(if you remove the jumpers to the USB chip),12 input only pins
2 hardware serial ports(one connects to the USB chip via jumpers), the second can also be used as a hardware SPI bus.
1 harware I2C bus with pullup on SDA.
25% faster than AtomPro
56kbytes flash
4kbytes eeprom
TimerZ can be used as a time base even when using HSERVO2 system(HSERVO2 system uses TimerZ0/1 Overflow only, clocks at theta/1).
Servo pulses are acurate to the clock cycle(compare match hardware).
HSERVO2 uses less than 00.9% processing power. Interrupts 6 times every 19.66ms.
4x2 button header has 10k pullups
32 servo pins have 47k pulldowns.
Agree, those parts being so flat will not interfere with anything, the through hole solder pins would snag more than the QFNs. We work with boards that have QFNs on top and bottom sides and they never have any issues.
This board has so many features packed in such a small form factor it’s amazing. The ARC-32s are a dream come true!
I have a question about the 3 LEDs - Are they all the same color (green) or are they color coded? (red, amber, green). Just curious. I assume they are all green for B.O.M. simplicity. Either way is cool.
They are different colors. IIRC red and green and maybe yellow. I don’t have one in front of me at the moment. I beleive the pwr one is green and the status one is red.
If they are different colors, this is good because when the bot is on the ground, it’s nice to know what state the board is in by its color. The bot board and the bot board II had color LEDs and it was nice to be able to use them to convey information to the bot master (you) as to what was happening. It was mentioned that the button interface is to be used for LEDs and buttons, so I assume the board LEDs are dedicated for board status such as power, battery, etc…
As Jim tried to answer the 4 QFN packages are 4052 multiplexers. This allows us to drive the 32 servers using the 8 capture/compare pins of the 3687 to produce 4 sets of 8 (eg 32 total) servo pulses per 20ms in hardware acurate to a single clock cycle. This method also has the advantage of allow us to wire up A/D pins to the same multiplexer pins. We have 4 A/D pins wired to 4 of the 8 multipler pins which allows us to get A/D readings from 16 of the 32 servo pins every 20ms. The disadvantage is that the multiplexer pins can only be used to produce pulse outputs or as inputs(analog on some and digital on the rest) on the servo pins. That is why 20 of the 32 servo pins have other 3687 I/Os directly wired to them. When not use a servo pin for a servo pulse you can use those pins with direct I/O like any normal I/O pin.
The three onboard Leds are PWR(direct wired to VL power regulator), Status(controlled by a 3687 pin) and Battery(controlled by a 3687 pin).
The Button header lets you easily wire up to a button(just connect the button across one of the four I/O pins and its associated ground pin. You can also use the button header I/Os to drive leds. And you can do what the BotBoard 2 does. Drive a Led when not pushing a button from a single I/O. So you could add 4 LEDs and 4 more buttons by using the button header. And of course oyu can just use them as 4 more direct I/Os.
The AUX header has 6 full I/Os, special functions on it are A/D,TX,RX,SCK(for hardware SPI),SDA and SCL.
The 2-in-one will allow more room for other boards like my custom speech board. 8)
