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!
@Dave, no I didn't, I didn't get around to it lol.
@Irobot, while most of what is in ARC is pretty much burnt in my memory (it's borderline eidetic so it should be) my OCD means I prefer to check and be sure.
Seems Like the new UART ports on the EZ-B V4 can do wonderful things. Any possibility that someday one or more could be used to pass data thru to an EZ-B V3? Would just need to remove the bluetooth adapter on the V3 and make up a 3 pin serial cable. From the sounds of it the V4 UARTs are fast enough. Wouldn't think it would be a huge mod to the ARC software either. Would be a great feature for things like the B9 robots which need multiple controllers. Gets the robot controlled by WiFi instead of bluetooth and makes the V3 alot more useful and it is all controlled with ARC software.
@Robert Wizard Idea! V3 and V4 linked together via one WiFi