While the plastic injection molds are being verified and the PCB's are being assembled for delivery, I decided to spend a little time in the EZ-B v4 firmware to see what else I could pull out of it for features... You know, to make your wait worth it
While the molds are checked over for quality injections.
Well, I discovered there was just enough RAM left to add another UART/Serial TTL port for expanding modules! That's huge news - with a total of 3 High Speed UARTs on the EZ-B v4! The top speed is 3.75 Mbs per UART! That's 3,750,000 bits per second. And to top it off, each UART has an input (read) buffer of 5,000 bytes!
What does this mean? It means the ability to add additional two way peripherals to the EZ-B v4, including GPS, iRobot Roomba and more!
I'm pretty sure this little 120 MHz ARM CPU is literally running to the max right now - there's nothing else I can get it to do
- Streaming real-time audio
- Super low latency real-time video
- TCP/IP Web Server
- WiFi (ad-hoc & infrastructure with DHCP server)
- 3 x high speed i2c ports
- 3 x high speed UART ports
- 24 x Servo/Digital ports
- 8 x 12 Bit ADC Ports
- 50 x Dynamixel Chainable Connection
- High Efficiency/Low Heat Digital Switching Power Supply
All packed in a little 2 inch by 2 inch form factor... You're welcome, World!
Thank you D.J. It sounds like my robot will have many options to grow! Steve S
Hey, Steve... as soon as I get my V4 board I am going to see if I can use the UART port to read the Create's sensor data... I'll let you know if I have any success... and hopefully likewise...
Stunning @DJ! Nothing short of amazing!
Richard , What program are you using that you will try to read the data you mentioned to Steve? Are going to use a terminal program or can you use the data windows in ARC? I'm lost in this area. I'm using a Kangaroo X2 operated by ARC and the SendSerial command. Kangaroo should be sending back serial text and I'm not really sure if I'll be able to see it in ARC or I'll need a stand alone program.
Realterm works... and I can read data using my old Basic Atom Pro mircrocontroller as well... Basically you send the Roomba a command and it spits back data... Like reading the drop sensor, bump sensors, motor amp draw, batt voltage etc... There are dozens of packet data you can get from the Roomba sensors... It's actually really easy if your computer/micro controller can read as well as write serial....
@Dave, Sorry I have been meaning to reply to your other post but wanted to double check first.
ARC has a serial terminal in it as one of the controls under the general tab. I'm pretty confident you'll be able to have ARC read what the Kangaroo sends back. I'm about to look in to getting a sabertooth and kangaroo however funds are very tight but it's one of those things that's been on my wishlist for a while so I may just decide to turn down the heat for a couple of weeks or eat less
@DJ, awesome! I think that sums it up well enough
Hey Rich, the ARC serial terminal might actually work reading data from the Roomba... I mean if your computer had a serial port and the Roomba was connected directly to the port (sans EZb controller)...
Link to Create.exe with examples of many applications using the iRobot Create.
The new roomba control for the v4 receives sensor data. You won't need to program for it
However, to use the receive buffer for the uarts, you will use their respective EZ-Script commands. Search for uart in the EZ-Script manual