I'm receiving a ARM (phillips) based demo board next week for nothing related to robotics. But since I'm receiving it anyway, let me ask.
What would it be useful for in a mobile robotics application? I mean, I was planning to use PIC microcontrollers (18F482) that I thought were enough to handle sensor data and send it to the cpu running windows. Would it be any advantage to replace PICs with ARMs? Wouldn't that be overkilling?
Let me guess, Circuit Cellar contest? :-)
Yeah, I had similar problems, only the other way around: I originally planned on using an Atmel ARM7-based micro to control everything low-level in my robot and communicate to the PC for high-level intelligence, but ended up using AVR-s at the low end. I couldn't justify the additional processing power.
Anyway, you could probably do some cool stuff, for example scanning Doppler sonar processing, simple image-processing with structured lighting, or visual odometry. In general higher data-rate signal processing with not too serious memory requirements.
Regards, Andras Tantos
"Andras Tantos" wrote
Hehe, right on target.
Padu
It is a coool board. I am interfacing my camera to it (gameboy) working on edge detections now.
Rich
18f482 ? -> 18f248 or 18f448 ?? 18f248 which they are replacing with 18f2480
If you already have the pics , not really.
Few possibilities Use it to add voice like the Keil demo application that comes programmed on the Keil board.
Use less micros , replace most of the pics with 1 or two arm chips.
Process the sensor data before sending to windows ?
I wish microchip would hurry up and get these available
Few links for the lpc21xx chips groups.yahoo.com/group/lpc2000
Alex
"Alex Gibson"
ooops, 18f452
That's what I thought. If I have some spare time, I'll try to fit one of these ARMs in my design just for the sake of learning it.
Yes, for example, the API I'm designing on the windows side expects incoming messages all wrapped with the same protocol. Besides that, the sensors may generate data that I don't need on a higher level, as for example number of satellites in the sky from the GPSs. For some sensors, there won't be any processing. The MCU will buffer and package the data to send over the RS485 network to the PC.
Thanks for the links
Padu
I have a couple 233MHZ StrongARM processor based thin client computers that I have been thinking about for a while. They are very power efficient and small. There is also a version of NetBSD for it as well. I'm not quite sure it is worth the work. I've been debating just tossing them for a few years.
Your post just reminded me to get an order in with microchip they extended their free shipping offer until the end of the month.
What protocol are using for the RS485 ?
Been trying out some of the spakfun radio boards(use the nordic rf2401 chips) great little boards for the price.
Alex
"Alex Gibson"
You mean the software protocol over RS485? Or the physical protocol on the RS485? If the later case, just a standard 1 master (the PC) and many slaves (the PIC daughterboards). For the software protocol, we will try to use JAUS.
Padu
"mlw" wrote
If I'm not mistaken, that's the same processor that is inside my iPaq 3635. I've done a little bit of development on it using winCE.
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