Hi there everyone!
I was wondering because im new and all if anyone could tell me the difference between the atom bot board and the sevo control board
you can just plug the servos from the arm straight into the atom bot board, right? or do you need a cobination of both, or just one?
Any replies would be appreciated. Thanks. 
yes, you can use just the bot board to control the servos, but if u get an SSC-32 u need the software or the basic atom to create movement
The Atom Bot Board is a carrier board that allows you easy access to the I/O lines of a microcontroller that you plug into it. It also provides some handy functions such as an amplified squeeker for audio, some buttons and LEDs, voltage dividers for using the Atom A/D inputs with voltages higher than +5, and a header for plugging in a PlayStation controller (with an adapter cable). For limited numbers of servos, you can plug them into the I/O headers, and use the microâs PWM and/or pulsout functions to generate the servo pulses, but this often comes at the expense of having to code around your servo control routines once youâve used up any free-running PWM outputs on your micro.
The name âSSC-32â stands for âSerial Servo Controller, 32 channelsâ. Thatâs exactly what it is - a servo controller. You feed it a serial command, and it produces pulses on its 32 output lines to control servos, offloading that task from your micro or computer. It also has four connections that can be used as digital or analog inputs. Yes, it has a microcontroller at its heart, but itâs dedicated to running the servo-control firmware, and cannot easily be modified to run your own custom programs.
The SSC-32 is a servo controller, not a complete brain-on-a-board.
The Bot Board (in conjunction with a microcontroller) is a brain-on-a-board, with limited capability to drive servos directly.
In addition:
A lot of it depends on how you plan to control your arm, walker, or whatever you have hooked to the controller (as this is the arm forum, I assume youâre driving a robotic arm).
Since an arm is likely to have 4 or more axes, youâll probably want to use an SSC-32 to drive it, rather than tying up all of your microâs time with generating pulses.
If you want to have the arm connected to a computer such as a desktop or notebook, which sends it position commands, then the most common configuration is to use an SSC-32, and run a program on the computer (such as RIOS or SEQ) to send commands to it via a serial link.
If you want it to be autonomous, or to receive and interpret commands from a handheld controller, then you would probably do well to go with an ABB, with a micro plugged into it, which receives and interprets the controllerâs commands, and then sends them to an SSC-32, to which the armâs servos are connected.
There are exceptions to these configurations, but they are probably the most common setups out there.
NOTE: if you are using a BASIC Stamp as your micro in the configuration using the Bot Board, you can use the ABBâs built-in PS2 port. If you use an Atom, youâll need to plug it into the I/O headers. If you use an Atom Pro, youâll need to either make a modification or two, or build a breakout cable. Or something like that - itâs been a while since I hooked a PS2 controller to an ABB. I think itâs still a little ways off, but the ABB is being redesigned to better accommodate the Atom and Atom Pro microcontrollers, at the (fairly negligible) expense of direct support for the BASIC Stamp micro.
First of all i want to say thanks for the replies 8)
When using the ssc-32 servo controller you have to run the arm directly through the computer via the serial link and only from the computer
When using the atom bot board you can program the microcontroller first using a computer. then the robot runs by itself after that without the means of the computer plugged into the abb.
Im not quite sure so am I right about this or am i not?
Any replies again will be much appreciated
The SSC-32 can receive commands from anything that can generate a serial stream with the properly-formatted commands. This can be a desktop or notebook computer, a pocket PC, a microcontroller, or anything else, so long as it can provide commands in the expected format. In a desktop robot arm context, this is often done with a PC, but this is only one of many possible configurations.
With the Bot Board, you can program the micro with a computer, and then, if your program provides, it will run the arm on its own. Again, this task is greatly simplified by the use of an SSC-32 in conjunction with the ABB and micro, because it frees the micro up from having to generate the servo control pulses full-time.
