Brainstem GP module - any good?

Jul 16, 2004 1 Replies
M

Hi,



I've been looking for a few things to hook up to a laptop/pda to control a few servos, perhaps a sensor or two and came across this Brainstem thing

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It seems kinda nice because it can run concurrent code as well as act as a simple serial controlled slave thing driving the servos etc, or stand alone as a full blown controller. The "Reflex" feature looks kinda nice too.



I wondering if anyone has used one of these before, or got any general experience of using them? They look ideal for what I want to use it for (initially as a slave serial device but eventually for other things, perhaps stand-alone), so i'd be interested to hear from anyone else about this.



Thanks,



Matt Dibb


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C

Yeah, I picked one up a couple years ago. Although I've rarely used it's more advanced features, it's dead easy to use as a slave serial device, particularly as a serial to I2C router. Of course, that functionality you could easily make yourself, but the clean finished board is a good starting point if you don't want to reinvent the wheel while also starting with a platform for more complex behaviors. Acroname usually has a few staff members looking over their forums to answer any questions.

Also, one aspect I really do appreciate is their attempt at relatively open, cross-platform support with libraries for Mac, Windows, Linux, and Java. I believe the code's even available for tinkering, as I've considered wrapping the Brainstem libraries with SWIG for use in Python.

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