Subject:
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Re: MOC: Working solar powered rover and geiger counter
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.robotics
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Date:
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Mon, 20 Feb 2006 16:22:50 GMT
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Viewed:
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2038 times
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In lugnet.robotics, Justin Fisher wrote:
> Hiyall. I just got my Lugnet posting access working again, so I thought I'd post
> a here's-my-Lego-webpage link. Ignore as you see fit :-)
>
> One of my areas of interest is building solar-powered robots (and the necessary
> custom mindstorms parts to make them work). I recently put up a page with some
> pics of the solar rover I took to NWbrickCon, and some RCX geiger counter
> sensors:
>
> http://home.earthlink.net/~stuff.tm/solarlego/nwbrickcon05/index.html
>
> Some various related stuff at the main page:
> http://home.earthlink.net/~stuff.tm/solarlego/index.html
>
> Also at NWBrickCon, the tip of one of my models just barely enters the frame of
> a photo of something else in Brick Journal issue 3. That's close to getting a
> model in print, but no cigar. Maybe next year :-)
>
> - Justin
Hey, your RCX power-on electronics challenged me to try to wake up the RCX by
software. This is quite difficult, because if powered down, the RCX not only
shuts down all its peripherical devices, but also sends the H8 micro-controller
to sleep. There is no internal oscillator that would keep it running. The only
way seems to be pressing the On/Off button to generate an interrupt (IRQ1) that
is able to wake up the H8. (By the way, you also could program the Run-button
with IRQ0 to do the same.)
Now the question for solar panel activity is to power down the RCX in order to
reduce the minimum current consumption (about 40mA), so that the batteries are
being efficiently recharged, if the robot is not active. Your solution is to
switch the RCX off by software means and on by hardware.
However, there is a way to do everything by software. The trick is to shut down
any peripherical activity and keep the H8 alive! The remaining power consumption
is higher than if the H8 was in sleep-mode, but you don't need to hack the RCX
hardware. How is this done? Because the real problem is that if you shut down
the periphery, you also shut down external RAM, and the program isn't executed
anymore.
The solution is to use the H8 on-chip RAM. On the program diagram in advanced
Ultimate Robolab the "snooze" subroutine is first transferred to the on-chip RAM
than, if the user has pressed the PRGM-button the subroutine is run in this
memory, which than has the function of a cache-memory.
<<http://www.convict.lu/ULTIMATE/Power_up.gif>>
http://www.convict.lu/ULTIMATE/power_up.asm
Download this firmware and check out. The RCX stays in snooze mode for about 20
seconds. (You could add battery-checking code...)
http://www.convict.lu/ULTIMATE/power_up.srec
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | MOC: Working solar powered rover and geiger counter
|
| Hiyall. I just got my Lugnet posting access working again, so I thought I'd post a here's-my-Lego-webpage link. Ignore as you see fit :-) One of my areas of interest is building solar-powered robots (and the necessary custom mindstorms parts to make (...) (19 years ago, 7-Feb-06, to lugnet.robotics) !
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