I am here because I need some help programming my (first) "robot"... The idea is that I have a gumstix (verdex XL6P RoHS) at free use and that for further use, this is the best solution (need calculating power, for small and light cards...)! I am now trying to understand how it works and how I can build a embaded system to work my robot well...
If anyone ever used a gumstix and can explain me the basis to succeed in gettind an idea on how verdex linked to robostix works and understands C that would be great... (what I really need is how do I use the inputs and outputs of the robostix, digital or analogic I'll need both of them later...)
Thank you very much, I'll be happy if you can even give me links to websites or forums to people who alreadymade something out of it!
I own a gumstix board and also a roboaudiostix. But I do not have much experiences with that. You need a lot to learn about linux, command line tools, makefiles ans so one before you can really begin to start with it. For the limited free time I have this was no good idea, to order this stuff. For beginners it must be horror I think. The Robbostix board with the Atmel controller is more easier, if you are familiar with Atmel controllers .
The communication between gumstix and robostix is done with I2C . On the gumstix wiki you can find some examples. Especially the i2c-io examples is what you need, accesing the robostix IOs from the gumstix board.
As advice, I would start with the robostix board stand alone.
The on-board microcontroler is an Amtel ATMega 128. The user wiki has a helpful page for installing the Amtel AVR toolchain. The version numbers are a little out of date, but it’s somewhere to start. https://wiki.gumstix.com/index.php/Robostix_toolchain Also, Amtel has an IDE for its microcontrollers, available at: http://www.atmel.com/tools/ATMELSTUDIO.aspx I haven’t tried it out, but I would assume it works with the majority of Amtel’s MCs. The Verdex Pro is an older Gumstix COM, but can run a full linux kernel and Gumstix has resources for setting it up and disk images for download at: https://www.gumstix.com/software/software-downloads/#angstromhttp://gumstix.org/getting-started-guide/242-create-a-bootable-microsd-card.html I have made an updated version of the 2-partition SD maker tool (mk2partsd) and have started a new repo with it. I’ll be adding other helpful tools to it as I play around here. https://github.com/GumstixExperimental/GuruTools/tree/master/new_mk2partsd The user wiki mentioned above is a great resource for project examples and ideas. Check it out; I hope some of it is helpful to you. That’s some stuff to get you started. Feel free to drop me a line if you have any trouble setting up. Best, Keith P.S. this project is based on a Gumstix Verdex Pro COM. It’s pretty cool, check it out.
.