Interfacing SSC32 with Parallax Eddie Control Board

Lynxmotion Electronics & Software
1

Dear all,

I intend to drive 9-10 r/c servos (Hitec) using the control board (schematic) shown below:

control board.jpg
control board.jpg735×860 264 KB

At the present, there are already 5 sensors on-board: 2 PING sensors and 3 IR sensors occupying 5 I/Os of the control board. Now, in order to drive 10-11 r/c servos (possibly Hitec 645MG) using the same control board, what options do I currently have?

Is it possible to interface a SSC32 to this board? This way SSC32 may take control of all the servos. The control board is equipped with a propeller micro-controller. My plan is to do all the maths/calculations on a PC which may simply send PWM signals to SSC32 through the propeller. My interest lies in a solution which requires the least hardware modifications.

I am really novice in hardware modifications and hardware programming so any plug & play solution would definitely help me greatly. I therefore request forum members to guide me in this regard.

Appreciate your time and help.
Thanks

2

Didn’t see any com ports!

Alan KM6VV

3

The communication is through the usb port (next to the fan port as shown in the above figure).
Any suggestions please?

4

To use the USB port, you’d have to talk to it with a host (or OTG).

You could bit-bang a serial port from a digital I/O pin.

alan KM6VV

5

Any plug & play solution to interface SSC32 with the above parallax control board? I see that there are some Digital I/O pins available. Can these be used to communicate with the SSC32. Any suggestions please.

6

Any microcontroller can talk to the SSC-32 using TTL serial communication. What is the concern with this board?.

7

Thanks Jim for looking into this.

Yes, I looked at the “SSC32 interface with BotBoard2” in some tutorials but here I want to interface SSC32 with the board shown above using a propeller chip which operates at 0-3.3V. From the schematics of SSC32, I see that the Serial TTL communication port “Port 13” operates at 5V. One way could be to connect the RX pin on SSC32 to any one of the following GPI/O pins (using 4.7k resistors) on the control board as shown below:

GPIO.jpg
GPIO.jpg1914×786 294 KB

I am not expert in interfacing hardware. Therefore, I request your kind assistance in this regard. My objective is to drive r/c servos through the propeller connected on this board. To achieve this, I need to interface SSC32 with the board so that it can receive data on its RX serial input pin from the propeller.

Please advise.
Thanks

8

My quick look through documentation is that the 12 io pins have 4.7k resisters inline to allow them to connect to 5 v devices, so output from ssc should not be issue. But output from board to ssc I am not sure if the voltage will be high enough for ssc32, sounds like other pins available with 0k …

Urt