 | | Brainstorms —John Barnes
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| | | Ok. I've seen a similar ebb and flow of ideas for modularization in this newsgroup before. The difference, is that now, most people who are reading this a probably well familiar with the RCX, Mindstorms, etc etc. The subject of this post is intended (...) (22 years ago, 8-Aug-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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| | | | | Re: Brainstorms —Jonathan Spitz
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| | | | | I don't know too much about electronics and micro-computing but here are my thoughts. For modularity I would use some kind of conector plate like the ones for old motors. This connectors would provide electricity and communication between bricks, (...) (22 years ago, 8-Aug-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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| | | | | Re: Brainstorms —Steve Baker
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| | | | | (...) It's more than that. Lego is all about having no arbitary limits on what you can build. If you have enough bricks, you can build arbitarily complex things. However, RCX is horribly limited - and it's limits are obvious and easily reached. (...) (22 years ago, 9-Aug-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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| | | | | RE: Brainstorms —Ralph Hempel
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| | | | | (...) <SNIP> The more things change..... It's funny, but if you look back at the rec.toys.lego archives around 1998 you will find a thread that is very similar to this, and then LEGO brought out the RCX. Producing, selling, and supporting single (...) (22 years ago, 9-Aug-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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| | | | | | | Re: Brainstorms —Steve Baker
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| | | | | | (...) It doesn't need a voice synthesizer - it DOES need the ability to ADD a voice synthesiser. It's a pretty pathetic CPU by modern standards...if all you are using it for is turning motors on and off and reading sensors - then it's fine - but (...) (22 years ago, 9-Aug-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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| | | | | Re: Brainstorms —Elijah Meeker
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| | | | | I'd really love to have the time to do this right, with links to all the neat articles I have been finding for lunch time reading, and to be up todate on the technology involved. But I will be lucky if I can get this written befoe I am required to (...) (22 years ago, 9-Aug-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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| | | | | | | RE: Brainstorms —Bruce Powell
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| | | | | | | Elijah has IMHO a nice starting point for a series of modules for Robotics. My extensions, would be based upon a common addressing system ala Dalas Semi 1 wire. This allows for simple stacking of 1wire devices. Compiler/Interpreter keeping track of (...) (22 years ago, 9-Aug-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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| | | | | | | | | Re: Brainstorms —Steve Baker
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| | | | | | | | | (...) Ooh - I'd forgotten the Dallas Semiconducter 1-wire interface - that would work out really well. Do Dallas still make a bunch of interesting devices for that standard? (...) I2C has ROM and RAM devices that plug right into the I2C bus. I think (...) (22 years ago, 9-Aug-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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| | | | | | | | | Re: Brainstorms —Steve Baker
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| | | | | | | | I2C devices are *tiny* because they don't need many pins. If you look at the CPU chip inside the RCX, it's 4cm long and 2cm wide - that's because it has thirty-some I/O pins on it. An I2C device typically needs two pins for power and ground, a (...) (22 years ago, 9-Aug-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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| | | | | | | | | | SV: Brainstorms —Henrik Lind
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| | | | | | | | There is a description including PCB and parts list of how to make an RCX to I2C interface in the Elector Electronics magazine No. 309,APRIL 2002: (URL) overview: I2C Interface for Lego RCX 'Brick' (Parts List) It has, by now, become well known that (...) (22 years ago, 31-Aug-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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| | | | | | | | | | i2c protocol with the rcx (was Brainstorms) —Ralf Krause
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| | | | | | | | Hi, I tested the RCX-to-I2C-board from Elector Electronics. I think it's very good for educating and experimenting where the user learns very much about the protocol and function of the i2c bus. (...) Yes, it's right .... you can use the RCX to (...) (22 years ago, 31-Aug-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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| | | | | | | Re: Brainstorms —Elijah Meeker
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| | | | | | and (...) Now that I think about it, in order to raise the signal to noise in the message queue, the sensors should have 3 modes: Listen to the message queue (default) Listen and notify on change Listen and notify on clock Okay that's all I can (...) (22 years ago, 9-Aug-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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| | | | | Re: Brainstorms —Rob Hendrix
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| | | | | I'd like to see something inline with all the other comments that would be able to use standard IRDA from my laptop. And have pwm output for servos. Rob (22 years ago, 9-Aug-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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| | | | | Re: Brainstorms —Richard Jenkins
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| | | | | Cheers John! Not really a high-end user, I'm fairly satisfied with the RCX brick with a few exceptions: First, it isn't really that robust. I've got 2 RCX bricks, and both get amnesia. Bending out the battery clips reduced the problem in one, but (...) (22 years ago, 9-Aug-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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| | | | | | | Re: Brainstorms —Steve Baker
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| | | | | | (...) Also, for the Robot Sumo fanatics, they could have multiple battery packs and many, many motors. If the batteries aren't modular - then they impose a limit on the amount of stuff you can have - so the power supply has to scale along with (...) (22 years ago, 9-Aug-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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| | | | | | | | Re: Brainstorms —David Koudys
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| | | | | | | (...) <snip> (...) buy in the store, much as it is now. Then, like servos or such, you can buy add-on's which would snap to the side of the RCX. These add on kits could be: motors plus snap-on expansion port to the RCX Sensors (any type) with, (...) (22 years ago, 9-Aug-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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| | | | | | | | RE: Brainstorms —Bruce Powell
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| | | | | | | (...) ......... SNIP (...) Why have just one BUS, different BUS's are optiomised for different purposes and it can be easy to support different types (Possibly by different midules). ie 1Wire, I2C, Ethernet Bruce Powell (...) (22 years ago, 9-Aug-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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| | | | | | | | RE: Brainstorms - multiple I/O buses —Bruce Boyes
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| | | | | | | (...) Exactly our approach. JStik on a JCX system will have ethernet, high speed I/O bus (bytewide data, addresses and strobes). SPI and I2C are supported, also Dallas 1Wire with a JSimm board plug in. Oh, IrDA and RS485 will be options too. When? (...) (22 years ago, 9-Aug-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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| | | | | | | | RE: Brainstorms (battery options) —Bruce Boyes
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| | | | | | (...) I like the 9.6V NiMH R/C model battery packs, that's what we use in my university class. It's easy to parallel them or have separate packs for brain, motor and servos. Should we stick with that and add an on-board charger? Or keep the charger (...) (22 years ago, 9-Aug-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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| | | | | Re: Brainstorms —Wayne Gramlich
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| | | | | All: I think the project that I am working, called RoboBricks, on is quite relevant to this topic. Since this is my first post to this group, I should introduce myself as a very active member of the Home Brew Robitics Club based out of San Jose, (...) (22 years ago, 10-Aug-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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| | | | | | | RE: Brainstorms —Ralph Hempel
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| | | | | | | Wayne wrote (in his first post no less!) (...) <snip> (...) <snip> This is more like it. I've snipped out the juicy bits on the serial comms channel and modular power connector. The comms channel sounds a bit slow, but then again the fire alarm (...) (22 years ago, 10-Aug-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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| | | | | | | RE: Brainstorms —Ralph Hempel
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| | | | | | | Wayne, In the spec you indicate that each brick gets its own 128 bit random number. This is like a serial number that is initially use to uniquely identify each brick with a shorter BrickID. This is a common technique in fire alarm systems where (...) (22 years ago, 10-Aug-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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| | | | | | | | | RE: Brainstorms —Russell C. Brown [RR-1]
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| | | | | | | | This may be totally off-base--I'm not as techy as you guys--but the software biz has the idea of a universally unique ID (UUID, a.k.a. GUID for globally unique ID). It's a way of generating a unique number without any centralized management. Windows (...) (22 years ago, 12-Aug-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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| | | | | | | | | | RE: Brainstorms GUID —Bruce Boyes
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| | | | | | | | Quoting "Russell C. Brown [RR-1]" <rcbrown@austin.rr.com>: (...) Well, one easy answer is to use a Dallas serial number chip. They are way less than a dollar in quantity. Actually each 1Wire device has a guaranteed unique ID. Some have EE memory for (...) (22 years ago, 12-Aug-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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| | | | | | | | | | Re: Brainstorms GUID —Steve Baker
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| | | | | | | | | (...) > somewhere must administer who gets what ID numbers. (...) The trouble with all these fancy approaches is that they all require additional logic. It might not seem like *much* additional logic - but if the goal is to fit most kinds of (...) (22 years ago, 12-Aug-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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| | | | | | | | | | Re: Brainstorms GUID —Wayne Gramlich
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| | | | | | | | | All: I'm not sure I really understand what point is trying to be made. I thought that a globably unique id was a good idea and put them into RoboBricks. My choice was to use a 128-bit random number. There are other solutions. All of the other (...) (22 years ago, 12-Aug-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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| | | | | | | | | | Re: Brainstorms GUID —Bruce Boyes
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| | | | | | | | (...) Maybe I completely missed the point myself? I like your idea of intelligence so small it can fit into a brick, and then tie into upper levels of higher intelligence. That sounds like true distributed processing (a good thing) to me. Here's the (...) (22 years ago, 12-Aug-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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| | | | | | | | | | Re: Brainstorms GUID —Steve Baker
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| | | | | | | | | (...) Presuming they can use different seeds, 32 bits is one chance of collision every 4,294,967,296 attempts. If they don't have random seeds then it doesn't matter a damn how many bits you have. The chances of collision on each reboot go up (...) (22 years ago, 13-Aug-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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| | | | | | | | | | Re: Brainstorms GUID —Wayne Gramlich
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| | | | | | | | (...) That's what we thought as well. (...) If you use a pseudo random number generator with the same seed you will get the same `random' number. The obvious answer is don't do that. I personally use the /dev/random device on Linux which collects (...) (22 years ago, 13-Aug-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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| | | | | | | Re: Brainstorms —Steve Baker
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| | | | | | | (...) the interconnect protocol is run so slowly. Why only 2400 baud? Anything where you have an actual copper wire connection could run orders of magnitude faster. Heck even iRDA goes faster over infraRed. ---...--- Steve Baker ---...--- Mail : (...) (22 years ago, 10-Aug-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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| | | | | | | | | RE: Brainstorms —Ralph Hempel
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| | | | | | | | | (...) <just an opinion> The 2400 baud rate was probably chosen as a compromise between speed and what could reasonably be done on the teeny leetle PIC processor that drive the bricks. In practice, with the dedicated protocol that Wayne describes, (...) (22 years ago, 10-Aug-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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| | | | | | | | | Re: Brainstorms —Wayne Gramlich
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| | | | | | | | Steve: Everything is a compromise. Here is a discussion of the issues that caused us to pick 2400 baud for RoboBricks: 1) Most of the various PIC's that we use (PIC12C509A, PIC12C672, PIC16C505) run at 4MHz. The 4MHz clock rate is divided by 4 to (...) (22 years ago, 11-Aug-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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| | | | | | | | | | Re: Brainstorms —Steve Baker
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| | | | | | | | (...) <snipped some reasonable arguments> This is why I recommend that 'brainstorms' goes with something like I2C. That protocol is fast and built into the chip. No software serial I/O is ever needed and every chip already speaks the protocol so (...) (22 years ago, 11-Aug-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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| | | | | | | | | | Re: Brainstorms —Wayne Gramlich
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| | | | | | | | (...) The RoboBricks project was started 2-1/2 years ago. At that time, there were no readily available and 8-pin microcontrollers with built in I2C support. The Atmel tinyAVR series had some I2C support, but the chips were extremely difficult to (...) (22 years ago, 11-Aug-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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| | | | | | | | | | Re: Brainstorms —Steve Baker
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| | | | | | | | (...) Are you sure? I thought Philips had teeny-tiny microprocessors with I2C at least 10 years ago...before the I2C bus switched speeds from 100kbps to 400kbps. I2C is about 20 years old. (...) Address pins? What address pins? ---...--- Steve Baker (...) (22 years ago, 11-Aug-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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| | | | | | | | | | Re: Brainstorms —Wayne Gramlich
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| | | | | | | | | (...) They may have had them, but they didn't show up in any of the catalogs I was looking at. Semiconductor companies are quite notorious for deciding to stop production on various chips. Lot's of people tried to standardize on the Motorola HC11 (...) (22 years ago, 12-Aug-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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| | | | | | | | | | Re: Brainstorms —Matt Lawrence
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| | | | | | | | (...) I did a project with the Philips chips several years ago. I2C worked very well, the smallest chip I used was a 87C751. A little bit bigger than an 8-pin chip, but available in surface mount packages. Also, a friend of mine used a 751 as an I2C (...) (22 years ago, 12-Aug-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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| | | | | | | | | | Re: Brainstorms —Wayne Gramlich
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| | | | | | | | (...) [snip Philips uC] (...) The I2C bus is not really designed to support a bus scan. I'm not saying it can't be done, but I certainly haven't figured out how to do it. Until I see somebody who gives an extremely detailed description of how they (...) (22 years ago, 13-Aug-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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| | | | | | | | | | Re: Brainstorms —Steve Baker
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| | | | | | | | | Matt Lawrence wrote: > I think the addressing problem can be solved with random numbers and some > serious bus scanning. Failing that, burning a serial number into each > chip isn't that hard either. It would still require quite a bit of bus > (...) (22 years ago, 13-Aug-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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| | | | | | | | | | Re: Brainstorms —Matt Lawrence
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| | | | | | | | (...) Since I had to support hot-pluggable devices on the bus (not my idea), I had to continually scan the bus. Unfortunately, that was several years ago and I don't remember all of the details. It took either a zero-length read or a zero-length (...) (22 years ago, 13-Aug-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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| | | | | | | | | | Re: Brainstorms —Till Harbaum
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| | | | | | | | Hi, (...) Weird idea ... (...) It's way simpler: You just send the address and wait for the acknowledged via the data line. Then you just don't continue ... you don't even need read access to the clock line for this. IMHO something that can carry (...) (22 years ago, 13-Aug-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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| | | | | | | | | | Re: Brainstorms —Wayne Gramlich
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| | | | | | | | (...) [snip hot pluggable] (...) That is only a partial bus scan. It does not tell you what is at each address. A full bus scan allows people to plug arbitrary devices into the bus and allows the bus master to to reliably figure out what has been (...) (22 years ago, 13-Aug-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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| | | | | | | | | | Re: Brainstorms —Andy Gombos
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| | | | | | | | | (...) I have read this dicsussion, and have been most interested. From what I can understand (I have no current desire to read the I2C spec) the random ID number will identify that device on the bus once it is detected (or the permenant number, (...) (22 years ago, 13-Aug-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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| | | | | | | | | | | Re: Brainstorms —Wayne Gramlich
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| | | | | | | | | | (...) Andy: I can understand not wanting to read the I2C spec., I haven't done it in a while myself. However, you are going to have to do a little homework on I2C. There is no real way around it, the bus is sufficiently complex that one's intuition (...) (22 years ago, 14-Aug-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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| | | | | | | | | | Re: Brainstorms —Steve Baker
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| | | | | | | | (...) I thought Philips kept a master registry of all the hardwired I2C addresses allocated to each chip vendor? That should mean that just reading the hardwired address is enough to tell you what *kind* of device you've found. ---...--- Steve Baker (...) (22 years ago, 13-Aug-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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| | | | | | | | | | Re: Brainstorms —Wayne Gramlich
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| | | | | | | | (...) There are only 1024 maximum addresses. There are more than 1024 I2C chips out there. Ergo, there are address conflicts between some of the chips out there. Unfortunately, there is no requirement that 2 chips at the same address implement the (...) (22 years ago, 13-Aug-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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| | | | | | | | | | Re: Brainstorms -- A Simple Unique Addressing Scheme —Dick Swan
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| | | | | | | | There's been a lot of messages on how to determine unique addressing for intelligent peripherals. Model railroading has solved this problem in a fairly easy way. THe NMRA (National Model Railroading Association) defined the DCC (Digital Command (...) (22 years ago, 14-Aug-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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| | | | | | | | | | Re: Brainstorms -- A Simple Unique Addressing Scheme —Wayne Gramlich
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| | | | | | | | (...) [snip DCC references] (...) That might be workable. I2C does not really have a broadcast message (General Call is close, but not quite). However, just scanning the I2C bus for 1024 addresses to find what the current address of the module is (...) (22 years ago, 14-Aug-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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| | | | | | | Re: Brainstorms —Stef Mientki
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| | | | | | hi Fred, I would love to see a reaction from you on the discussion in this thread in lugnet.robotics. Not only because you're the inventor of the RCX but also you've done some some similar things, creating modular, stackable electronics with the aim (...) (22 years ago, 12-Aug-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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| | | | | Re: Brainstorms —Jason S. Mantor
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| | | | | OK, I've been watching this thread for a few days (I am LUCNY's "Expert Lurker" after all !) and refining some ideas that I've had for a while in hopes that I can contibute to this dicussion in a useful way. Please keep in mind that I'm a Mechanical (...) (22 years ago, 11-Aug-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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| | | | | | | Re: Brainstorms —Steve Baker
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| | | | | | (...) So I imagine the need for a brainstorm brick that has a standard Lego wire connection on the top and a little I2C chip inside that would interface with existing motors and sensors. This would certainly be needed because nobody wants to butcher (...) (22 years ago, 11-Aug-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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| | | | | | | | Re: Brainstorms —Jason S. Mantor
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| | | | | | Steve, Thanks for the quick feed back : ) Please take a look below ... & LMKWYT. -JSM Steve Baker <lego-robotics@crynwr.com> wrote in message news:3D56C75C.403000...ail.net... (...) I was thinking that it could be used to hook up to joysticks, (...) (22 years ago, 11-Aug-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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| | | | | Re: Brainstorms —Jerry Kalpin
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| | | | (...) What you want... surely must depend on what you can reasonably expect to get. I have no expectation that LEGO will come up with a major revision that has the breadth and depth of the wonderful suggestions in the responses to John's post. (...) (22 years ago, 11-Aug-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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