It’s time for a redesign of the Bot Board. I’m looking for input from the Atom fans out there. Please review the schematic for the current design. lynxmotion.com/images/data/abbpdf02.pdf The tricky part is I would like to take advantage of the hardware on both the Atom 28 and the Atom Pro 28. I want to do the following:
o Add I2C support.
o Drop the BS2 play station port (this is the one with an inverter) it will not effect the Atom PS2 use.
o Retain the speaker, LED’s and push buttons.
This is your opportunity to get a feature you have been wanting.
I2C support sounds great . Having built-in pullup resistors that you can jumper in would be very nice, especially if on the PRO you could align it with the hardware SCL/SDA pins. Maybe define a standard I2C connection to the ABB like the brainstem and either have multiple connections on the board and/or define a standard cable that makes them easy to daisy chain.
Maybe for the Pro have jumperable pull-up resistor to support for the PS-2 controller. Maybe moving it off P12-P15 to free up RXD/TXD for hardware serial support.
Well, that pretty well addresses the suggestion that leapt immediately to mind when I saw the topic. The only thing that I could think of offhand would have been to have a jumper-configurable PS2 port that made all of the adjustments for converting it for use between BS2 and Atom/Pro micros, but if you’re dropping BS2 support anyway, why bother?
The BS2 robotics boards that I have hacked together in the past have included A/D conversion and background servo control, but the Atom/Pro micros already do those in hardware, so about the only thing that that might gain you would be to multiplex multiple channels onto a single control pin (8 servos on one I/O - sort of an integrated “micro-SSC-8”). It doesn’t look like you gain a whole lot of real estate by dropping the inverting circuit, although I guess the space inside the DIP socket’s frame is fairly under-utilized, and you could put stuff there.
OOH, WAIT! I know!
Native USB interface! PLEASE! I’m sick and tired of trying and re-trying and failing at every turn when I try to program my Atom Pro from my notebook; I’ve spent far too much money on USB adapters, far too much time downloading and re-installing new drivers, and have literally given up on trying to get the thing to work with anything that doesn’t have a true RS-232 serial port. Please, for the love of all things silicon, please come up with a native USB programming interface for this thing that works!
And, hey. I imagine that a USB interface would get rid of that huge nine-pin D-sub connector, and free up some of that valuable board space for other features.
Actually the FTDI FT232R would do this quite nicely with about the least amount of external components required vs. functions gained I have seen yet. Coupled with a USB mini-B header it is pretty tight size-wise. FTDI has drivers that support MS, Mac, and Linux platforms. It certainly would help eliminate a lot of the “I bought a generic brand X USB-to-serial converter off the back of a truck in the desert and it doesn’t work” type questions.
Separately, if you are going to add I2C support it would open up an I/O expansion board option pretty nicely. It would be really easy to stick half a dozen I2C based A/D, D/A, and I/O port expander type devices on a small plug in board. When you do your layout you might want to consider making provisions to accept something like this.
How close are the pinouts of the Basic Atom and Atom PRO microcontrollers to a standard Microchip PIC? I would love to see a bot board that could use the higher powered 28 pin (18F2550/2620/2680 and maybe 18F2685) and 40 pin (18F4550/4620/4680 and maybe 18F4685) PIC chips as well as the Atoms. There may not be enough room, even with a redesign, for a 40 pin socket though.
Yes, yes, and yes!
I would like to see more stout (sturdier) screw terminals for power and ground on the power supply connections. Those little screw terminals are very easy to break.
Add bus connections so all microcontroller signals can be easily brought off the board to other modules that might be created to stack on top of the ABB. You already have a great form factor little bot board, and it could be made even better if we could create other modules to stack on it with all signals available.
This is probably a bit off topic, but if you look at the Renesas H8 Hardware manuals, which there are/were links for on the Basic Micro website.
The hardware I2C interface has two IO pins (SCL, SDA) associated with it as well as several registers and one or more interrupts. Using the hardware I2C support in the microcontroller would probably allow you to do more reliable I2C communications as well as allow you to do other things while the communication is in progress.
An external 20X3 LCD and pinout on the board for it would be cool. It could be an optional part.
And a sperate pinout for the PS2 controller with a pullup jumper built in and the pins labeled to match the PS2 plugs. I think this would greatly simplify using a PS2 for beginners.
Pinouts for R/C control would be slick as well. I knwo these things can already be done using the I/O pins, but even if you had an external board that plugs into the I/O pins by sitting on top of the board, and has pinouts that are labeled, R/C receiver cahnel 1, channel 2, channel 3, etc.
Sounds dumb but I’m sure there are alot of beginner that would like to use R/c control but just don’t knwo enough to use the r/c stick program to set the pins up.
Adding some of the features the experienced users want but also adding some simplified “plug and play” labels and pinouts for beginners would make it more appealing to everyone.
The antenna could be a conection for an external whip. That would let you decide on your own antenna. If you had the space to use both Tx and Rx chips that would be great but I would prefer the recieve over transmit. If you only used one chip it would be best to have the other chip on a circuit board to connect to a pc or your own Tx micro. I would prefer Rx on the Atom bot board because if you think about it, the board is used a lot on remote controlled walkers or rovers. Well thats my 2 cents worth.
I have another thought for the new design also. Please mount the regulator such that it lays on the board rather than sticks up from the board as it does now. It’s too easy to break the regulator off, which is what just happened to me. I can probably fix it, but haven’t done it yet. I know this would use a bit more board space, but it would lengthen the life of a bot board.
The bot board is just for making the signals and interfaces of the microcontroller easily available and usable. While this sort of addition would be nice, I doubt there would be enough space to add it to the bot board and still keep it within the same form factor.
What would be nice though, is connectors to allow stacking additional boards on top of the bot board where all signals and interfaces would be accessible. It would make it very easy to add a prototype board on top of the bot board…
oh. i didn’t see where keeping that same board size was a constraint.
the Handyboard had a nice expansion board that offered port xtenders, sonar interface, a/d on it. having the new ABB stack with other i/o boards would be a great alternative.
just want to say i think the ABB is a great board. now to get those i2c resistors in somehow…
Um what are you guys talking about? Is there some sort of USB bluetooth wireless bridge device that has a USB “A” plug on one end (the PC based host) and either USB “A” receptacle or “B” plug (a USB peripheral) on the other?
You can’t put an “A” receptacle on the bot board and use a pair of bluetooth dongles to connect them unless your bot board has all the software to be a USB host device.
and then we could easily put a bluetooth for comunication