I’m planning on building a robot that will have both legs and wheels for locomotion. The robot is intended to be autonomous. It will probably entail 8 – 10 servos, 2 of which will be continuous motion for the wheels. I have experience with the Bot Board II and the Basic Atom as a means of servo control, but I have never used the SSC-32 controller. My questions are these:
Does the SSC-32 work for an autonomous robot or does it need to be tethered to a PC?
Can you run both standard and continuous rotation servos from the SSC-32?
Is the SSC-32 independent or does it need to work in conjunction with the Basic Atom and Bot Board II?
For 10 servos, would you recommend simply using the Bot Board II and Basic Atom, or would I be better served with the SSC-32 – either alone or in conjunction with the Basic Atom.
At 8 servos it’s at the top end for the timing using normal pulsout command for servo control. Over 8 and you run the risk of not being able to update the pulses fast enough.
The SSC-32 has some very powerful features, but it’s still going to need commands telling it what to do. There is a start up script but there is no decision making ability. Really what you have described sounds like it could use the group move feature of the SSC-32. That is the ability to send new destination position for any number of servos, and a time value. This starts and stops all of the servos at the same time, even if the distance they are moving is different. In other words the move takes exactly the same amount of time as the T value. Here is the SSC-32 users manual. lynxmotion.com/ViewPage.aspx … ID=70#serv
The SSC-32 can control, analog or digital servos that are 180° or continuous rotation. Hitec, JR, Futaba, etc.
The SSC-32 can be used with a PC serial port, USB to serial cable, bluetooth and wifi serial ports.
10 servos has a maximum worst case refresh of 20mS. That’s assuming your behavior code takes 0 time to complete. As soon as you add behavior code the 20mS will start to go long. Too much time here will cause the servos to be jittery and loose power.
What I’m trying to say is the best way to control a potentially complex robot is with both the SSC-32 and the Atom Processor. The Atom can do a lot of work when it doesn’t have to fool with generating servo pulses. The SSC-32 / Atom combo is a very powerful combination! 8)
If I go with the combination of the Basic Atom and the SSC-32, would I be able to make the robot autonomous or would the SSC-32 always have to be in contact with the PC?
With the Basic Atom on a Bot Board II connected to the SSC-32, you have everything you need for controlling very complex robots, including for autonomous behavior. The Bot Board II connects to the SSC-32 via a TTL level serial port. You select the pins you want to use for the serial port on the Bot Board in your code for the Basic Atom. Any pin(s) can be used as long as they are setup righ., You just need one pin to send commands to the SSC-32. There is no need to have the Bot Board II connected to the PC once the Basic Atom has been programmed with your code.
