RE: [Gumstix-users] tweener vs waysmall

[Klemmack, J. <JKlemmack@BlueCube.Com>]

In terms of small robotics, here's what I've found useful:

 - PWM signals.  Lots - 6 to 8 would cover the vast majority of robots
out there.

 - ADC & Signal counters.  Provide a clean interface for shaft encoders
or POT interfaces.  These are generally the cheapest, easiest ways to
determine servo positions, but plumbing them to PICs/MCUs can
(sometimes) be a pain.  ADCs are also great for a lot of non-discrete
things like temperature or pressure sensors.  Life would be happy if I
could just read from /dev/adc0 and write to /dev/pwm.

 - DAC would be nice too, but not so much in what I want to do.

 - FPU for the CPU.  I know its not really feasible, but calculating
Jacobians on-board would be nice, instead of having to calculate them
host machine and bring them down.  While we're wishing ;)

I know there are tons of chips out there to handle PWM, ADC, DAC, and
edge counters, so I think the hardest thing would be picking which ones
to use.

I'm not much of a hardware guy, so for my first project the Gumstix was
a wonderful way to have higher level logic in my tethered robot.  I
resorted to a BASIC Stamp for all the signaling, but the latency
(non-interruptable code in Stamp in "slow" PIC) and overhead (in wiring)
in doing that stopped me from persuing that avenue.

When talking about robotics, and dealing with motors, sensors and
whatnot, having those first 2-3 things available right out of the game
would be wonderful.


Johann


-----Original Message-----
From: gum...@li...
[mailto:gum...@li...] On Behalf Of Craig
Hughes
Sent: Wednesday, February 09, 2005 3:08 PM
To: gum...@li...
Subject: Re: [Gumstix-users] tweener vs waysmall


On Feb 9, 2005, at 11:59 AM, Sean Luke wrote:

> On Feb 8, 2005, at 11:07 PM, Craig wrote:
>
>>  We certainly hope so.  Next on the drawing board are dual ethernet,=20
>> GPS, a robotics controller board, cases, ...
>
> Might we make some recommendations on the robotics board?

We would love recommendations on all of the above.  We live to please=20
our customers :)

On robotics, we're actually building a robot internally at Gumstix HQ=20
to help with shipping, so this will be a eat-your-own-dogfood=20
situation.

C



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