Hi everybody. I have alot of questions and don't know how to find answers for them, so I would be very gratefull if you could tell me a precise location where to look for my answers.
So the questions are:
1. How to connect arduino severino to intellibrain board? I need to connect 3 of arduinos to one intellibrain only to send commands with coordinates so the arduinos can calculate the angles for servos to put the legs there, so i would only need to send 1 boolean to choose a leg and 3 integers to specify the coordinates.
2. How to connect 6 servos to arduino severino? I made this one http://arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoBoardSerialSingleSided3 and used Atmega8 chip, but I don't understand what pins can i I use to send servo signal with arduino command.
3. What kind of math functions can I use on arduino?
4. What is the cheapest way to detect heat on distance? Thermopile array is too expensive for me, and I don't need a precise scan or anything, just a way to distinguish a wall from a human and a fireplace, on a fixed distance of around 20cm, so i can make my robot look for obstacles and if its wall or fire walk away from it, or if it has human heat look at it attack it/beg for batteries/interact in any other way
Thank you for your time reading this and thank you in advance for any answers you can provide.
1) you can use either i2c, more info here: http://www.arduino.cc/playground/Learning/I2C. alternatively, use rs232 to ttl converter, just google it. use a max232 or any maxim ttl to rs232 ic will do.
2) not sure about your questions, but the pins usable are according to the library used, so all in theory
4. Obstacle navigation and finding a human are two different tasks. You may or may not find it simple to get one sensor to handle both. IR detectors and sonar are good with general navigation and obstacle avoidance. PIR sensors are good for detecting changes in heat, so they are great if your robot is standing still and you want to detect a human or animal in the room. PIR sensors are no good for detection when your robot is moving, because then the heat is always changing, and they will just trigger constantly. If you search around for fire detecting robots, you’ll find lots of material on robots that can locate the heat of a candle or something similar.
Thank you both for your answers. I will try to learn I2C since intellibrain board has 20 pins labeld with I2C and that should be more than enough, and materials provided are very good answer to 3, so thank you both very much for that.
for question 2, how can i use them all in theory? or even better, in practise, while testing the board i tryed to fade the LEDs and it worked when they were pluged into pins 9 and 10, but when i tryed pluging it in pin 8 it just changed between on and off, even though the code was the same.
and about 4, i don’t want to detect stuff with the heat sensor, i use sonar for that, i just want to know, after i find something, what temperature is it, without touching it. The robot can be still while he is measuring it, but the thing he is about to detect might be still too, so there isnt going to be much change there. I hope my explanation makes some sense, I often have a problem with having an idea in my head, but being unable to explain it to anyone…
You will only ever need to use (2) I2c lines (SCL and SDA) for everything. Everything is connected to the same set of pins and each one has an address so everyone knows who we are talking to.
for question 2) by in theory, i mean any output pin can be used to drive a servo, including analog inputs. however only the pwm output pins can fade leds.
