Very nice!
This REALLY needs to happen, Kurt! Imagine a setup like this with a Teensy 3.1, running micropython… This is exactly the type of thing we need more of. While the Teensy 3.1 is usable as is, it really needs a proper carrier board to be useful for robotics. With the XBee socket, this could also be used to build inexpensive sensor nodes. Teensy 3.1 has the power, the I/O (as in more than one hardware UART, etc), and, as you are showing here, can fit in the BotBoarduino form factor. Those UARTs and analog pins are valuable resources there is never enough of.
UART usage should be flexible. We don’t necessarily want to use them with resource they are wired to, so it should be possible to disconnect that and connect to a header for the UART instead. It would be nice to be able to connect to the Robotis as well as conventional R/C servos. Even though I can’t afford to play with the Robotis stuff right now, it would be nice to have the capability to do so at some point.
How could those pins on the bottom of the Teensy 3.1 be used, unless the Teensy could rest on traces right on the carrier board? You are doing some wonderful work here. Please continue it, and maybe Lynxmotion will jump in and help make it real. I think this has some serious potential, and I’d love to see it become real,
I love seeing the XBee socket on this! A Teensy 3.1, with a carrier board like this, could make a whole new kind of small robot possible. I’ll go so far as to say it could make it reasonable for us to experiement with swarm robotics, as I want to do. Put a Teensy 3.1 with a carrier like this on a small inexpensive rover, and you have the start of an inexpensive swarm.
I think traces for the pull-ups would be enough. A lot of people aren’t going to need them until they get more advanced.
For just having fun, I’m very darn impressed! Keep this going! 
8-Dale
I will answer more stuff later, right now playing with some stuff. But you also might be interested in Jon Hylands board. He shows it on the thread:
forums.trossenrobotics.com/showt … -3.1/page3
I like your carrier board design much better. I want to stay with the “standard” three pin header setup. Anything I put on W.A.L.T.E.R. has to be fully compatible with Lynxmotion products. Just make a carrier board that has all the Teensy 3.1 I/Os on three pin headers, with those special headers for UARTs and I2C. 
Oh, and keep that XBee socket! I plan to order a Teensy 3.1 next month. I don’t know if I will be able to get my UDOO quad or not, because I am adopting a new puppy, and I have to pay her adoption fee.
8-Dale
I did another round of editing using Diptrace and now everything is routed. I removed some functionality as well really did not need it so …
I updated my Part/pattern for the Teensy, to remove the 14 pins that are surface mount on the bottom of the teensy. I have read up on Teensy forum, that there are parts you can buy that are a 2x7 through hole pin to rectangular SMD pad part, that you can solder on. But this just seams like a pain, especially getting it properly aligned such that they go through the holes on my board with the other pins as well. So this decision caused me to remove where I routed those pins to as well… Also decided I did not need the 3 pin connectors for UARTS. Simple enough to do like I have done on other boards and simply remove center wire out of jumper and route to signal pin which is near by… There are simple jumpers where you can jumper the added functionality to the default pin or remove it… Also added places for through hole resistors to allow you to add PUs on SCL/SDA.
Will play with this a little more and then may order a couple to be fabricated. Not sure where I would do this yet. I have used PCBfabexpress for several boards, which has worked out fine. Could also use the default one that is set up with Diptrace. Bit more expensive, but don’t need to create and send gerbers, they work directly from the data, did this on the last board I did which worked fine. Or I think you can get some real cheap through either Sparkfun or Seeed studio, but these may take a long time. But then again don’t really need to work on these now…
Kurt
That does sound like a pain. I saw mention of a teensy3++ being in the works, but it sounds like that is still at least a couple months off, at the earliest. I don’t like the fact of there being functionality you can’t get to without it being a real pain. This is the one thing I don’t like about the teensy3.1 now. I don’t care to have functionality I can’t get to easily.
I would have preferred to keep the 3-pin headers for the UARTs. I also prefer a separate pin header for I2C.
Please keep us informed on what and how you do with this! Otherwise, I will wait for the teensy3++ coming in the future, or find something else. That idea of micropython is really attractive though.
8-Dale
I decided to try out OSH Park sales to fabricate 3 boards. This is the one who took over for Sparkfun, they were $34 for the three. Would be cheaper to produce them in China at SeeedStudio (I think the price was about $22 for 5…
I agree that the it would be nice to get to all of the functionality, but everything is a trade off. If you add on something like 14 pins on the two rows, that implies the board is now .7" longer (i.e. not so teensy). I cut out trying to get to these other pins, as I said it would be a pain to solder the adapter on and have it aligned properly… Also because once you bring every possible pin through, it becomes a real pain to route all of those wires as everything is taken up by the pins. It is doable, but I decided to KISS… If while I am playing with this the Teensy 3.1++ comes out, may try it out, but this may be fun in this form factor to fit it with the XBee. Will probably have to complete rearrange.
I thought about leaving the extra 3 pin connections for Serial, but does not add any functionality, as for myself I will probably mainly use the first two the way I have the board set. But after playing more with the board later and if desire continues, may make a .2 version. For example I may decide later to move XBee from Serial2 to Serial3. Why? D9/D10 which is RX2/TX2 look like they are also PWM pins. Maybe I will decide to try them out to run servos. On the pins I bring out there are 10pwm pins 6 on digital side, 4 on Analog side. Maybe if it strikes me to do so, will try out my Brat code using this… However this may turn out problematic as I think I read somewhere that someone was having issues getting the period slow enough for servos…
As for I2C again will consider adding connector(s) for a v.2, but in the past it was not really clear how much this helped, unless you adapted some standard like brainstem and had several parts, adapters, cables that were setup to use this.
But I also have to remind myself, that I am doing this for my own curiosity, to experiment to see how well a board like this would do on some of my robots, versus the different linux boxes. If it works, I will put up here and/or github all of the design files. Also places like the OSH park, I believe I can simply say make it available and others can have them fabricated as well. Will also put up parts list and the like. But you have to be able to use a soldering iron. I used bigger SMD parts on this design to hopefully make this easier. We will see.
I don’t blame you for deciding to just ignore the pins on the bottom of the Teensy3.1. Maybe we should move these last few posts about Teensy3.1 to a new thread?? We are going quite a ways off topic here talking about just Teensy stuff.
My argument for these added headers is the same as for having the I2C header, below. These just make wiring so much more convenient, in my opinion. I don’t have single wire lengths flailing all over the place, like I do when I have to connect to single pins and separate grounds. If you were a solderless breadboard user, like I am, I think you would understand better.
My take on this is that if a pin has two or more special functions available on it (digital only doesn’t count), then it should be avoided, if at all possible. Since D9/D10 have two special functions available (UART2 and PWM), I would try for UART3, if there are no other special functions on the UART3 pins. I know it’s all a trade off, and you have to decide what you want/need more out of this board.
I just know that I really like that special I2C and jumper setup the BotBoarduino has. I have that jumpered and am using that connector for I2C on the BotBoarduino now. It makes it very easy to use a three or four conductor cable to route I2C to another board or breadboard. I install a pin header set on my breadboards and just have to use a male to male three or four conductor cable to connect things up. It’s an extremely nice setup in my opinion.
I recently got a brand new Hakko FX-888D soldering station, and I can get a very narrow tip for it that is supposed to be great for SMD stuff. I’ve never soldered any SMD stuff, but with my new iron and that narrow tip, I think I could manage it. I’m going to get one of the tips the next time I order from Adafruit, and do some practicing on small pitch stuff.
I need to solder some sockets to the expansion connectors on my PandaBoard ES. If it can run ROS, I have some serious experimenting to do. The ROS stuff installed on it without error, from the repositories, so we shall see how this goes. I am going to restart my way through the tutorials and see how far I can get.
I’ve decided to go ahead and get a Teensy3.1, but I don’t know when that will happen. If this puppy gets through next Saturday without being adopted, I will be adopting her the following week, which means paying an adoption fee. I don’t know how much expendable cash I am going to have to fun stuff after I do that.
8-Dale
Yep - thread may be a little too teensy 
I will post more on it’s own thread, when I get the v.01 boards back from fabrication. Still need to order the parts to populate them. Started on a v.02 version, not sure will ever go there, but I did a few cleanups, plus did add in I2C 4 pin connector. May add the ability for making the AX-12 servo connections be able to handle a few other standards like some of their MX, which are 4 pin (full duplex). Again may never build more than 1 or 2 of these boards. Just having fun.
As I mentioned before, I think there are many of us who wonder what the next platform should be. Should it be one or multiple? i.e. have a setup for lower end systems and a higher end for more advanced systems… Is there a setup in the middle that works pretty well for both?
Another thread that popped up on similar issues is: forums.trossenrobotics.com/showt … -platforms. Looks like Jon Hylands is in the process of building their own new board.
Kurt
The Arduino Galileo should be available soon - we’ll likely check that out as well.
Yep - I see that Amazon.com and Newegg show them in stock now. I may have to order one at some point.
As I mentioned, I am more looking for the Tre, but the could be fun to try out… There is different writeups up on the net about it, including one by Sparkfun:
sparkfun.com/news/1360 One of the things I found interesting in this posting, is that most IO pins on the Galileo have a maximum change rate of 230hz. (exception I2C, SPI, Usart). Not sure how the one serial port is used (ie, is it taken by the usb connection like the Uno) or is it separate and can it be used like Leonardo. Otherwise for example not sure how one would connect it up to SSC-32, Robo-claw, … Not sure about how well devices connected through USB… So would take a bit of playing to figure out how well this works. Not sure when though.
Don’t let others choose what the platform should be for you. Use the platform that works best and has the best features for the project you are working on. This is easier said than done, when it comes to people like me though. I don’t have the electronics board design fu that you and many others have, and that’s just not a learning curve I am ready to climb right now. I have to depend on companies like Lynxmotion for products I can plug into my robotics projects easily.
However, I am starting to see where I can branch out a bit on my own. I’ve got a permanently attached breadboard on W.A.L.T.E.R.'s top deck now, and might add another (easlily removable) breadboard setup on the bottom deck. This allows me to take advantage of boards that are not necessarily well suited for robotics because they don’t have the right headers. I can breadboard anything I want to put on W.A.L.T.E.R. that isn’t already available, and I can easily change and rearrange the circuit as needed. My breadboard-fu is strong!
Right now, there are three things I would very much like to have - something fast that can run micropython, a combination quad core or more Linux/Arduino board (like the UDOO, for instance), and I can see where having a fast micropython based board with an Arduino part would be extremely nice for many projects since both are very easy to program and use. These are the kinds of platforms I want to use for my robots. They all have to be able to easily interface to those things we use in robotics, like the BotBoarduino.
The more I look into micropython, the more I think this has the potential to be the next Arduino. Somebody needs to jump in, and start using and promoting it in the robotics areas - as in supporting it commercially. It’s extremely easy to teach people how to use and program in Python - maybe even easier than teaching people how to use and program an Arduino. I really am liking this micropython, and very much want to get a platform that can run it.
It’s great to see Jon being excited about micropython. This is definitely a good thing for all of use who tinker with robotics.
8-Dale
Dale, I totally agree with you, that for ones like us, we can and should play with whatever platforms, that hits us that day. I for one am very guilty of this 
Kurt
Me too, of course! I would have many more platforms now, if I could just win the lotto… That may not stop me, now that my breadboard-fu has increased so much.
It’s what we do.
8-Dale
I am placing an order for Odroid-u3 and wonder if their IO-shield fulfill my needs.
Background: I acquired many Arduino shields(Tinkerkit) and and sensors was on sale at RadioShack] which are 5v logic level.
Planing to use Odroid-U3 with a webcam for OpenCV and their Odroid-IO Shield attaching Arduino Ultrasound Sensor (again 5V) for distance sensing.
Q1: My Question is, will the Odroid’s IO-shield is compatible with 5v shields/hubs like Tinkerkit?
In the future if I have to use with 3.3v sensor/actuators with Odroid’s IO-shield, will there be any problem?
Q2: I am searching for a Power Supply that has 3.3v, 5v, 12v rail for an autonomous rover project. Can you guys recommend any board that takes 12v DC as source or even have power harvesting capability from Solar and use Lipo battery.
Note: I acquired UDOO few days back and not happy to know that I have to use logic level converters to use with 5V sensors. Installed Debian armhf OS and JDK8.
Planning to develop distributed app using Vert.X platform that can span across multiple boards (RPi , UDOO and Odroid in future) each doing different functionality.
Since I found out about micropython, I have gotten interested in platforms that can run it well. I really want to get a Teensy 3.1, and have cloned the micropython repo. I just to find somewhere to order one that I am already wanting stuff from, so I can justify the shipping cost.
8-Dale
I actually just received two new Teensy 3.1s today, to try out in my boards (which also arrived today). I ordered them directly from PJRC and the cost to me for Priority mail was something like $7.29. If I wanted it cheaper from them, could have ordered as simple US Mail for $3.80
Will post more about the new boards soon
OK, you are evil… 
I just pressed the button on two teensey3.1 at PJRC. I selected UPS Ground, because it’s tracked ($8.33).
8-Dale
Sounds good. Note: they say that the priority mail is not tracked on their website, but when they shipped, it came with a tracking number, which I was able to use…
As I mentioned yesterday, the parts arrived for my breakout board. I started to assemble one of them:
The Teensy is not soldered in to the pins yet, as I will take it off and hook up power first and check some voltages and the like, before the smoke test.
Kurt
Professional.