Archive for the ‘Primus’ Category
Sunday, September 2nd, 2007
Once the main board is assembled, it can be tested without waiting for the sensor or motor driver boards to be ready. In time honoured fashion, we start with a little program to flash the LEDs.
With any new microcontroller project, it is a good idea to start with some simple ...
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Wednesday, August 29th, 2007
I finally have a primus mouse built and ready to test. All the bits are there and the processor runs up and can be programmed. Here are a few pictures to get you in the mood.
By placing the components on three separate boards, each is relatively simple to build and ...
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Thursday, August 23rd, 2007
The Primus micromouse will use the dsPIC30F4011 processor from microchip. It has plenty of power and resources for just about any micromouse and is relatively easy to get and use. Here is a list of the proposed functions for each processor pin on the controller board
dsPIC30F4011 Pin Functions for ...
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Sunday, August 5th, 2007
This is the first time I have used the SLA7062 so I made up a small test board to make sure everything will be OK. This turns out to be a splendid motor driver and the motors can be driven to very high speeds.
The board allows the selection of half, ...
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Saturday, August 4th, 2007
Now the motors are here and the brackets cut, it is time to assemble the bare boards to see what the mouse will look like.
Primus is intentionally simple and consequently a bit chunky. Two large and two small boards are needed. These are conveniently cut from pieces of perforated ...
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Saturday, August 4th, 2007
Micromouse sensors are subject to several sources of error and interference. Capturing a set of data samples lets you do some simple analysis of the effects of those errors.
The test rig was set up with a section of wall placed at about 50mm from the sensors. This gives a ...
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Wednesday, August 1st, 2007
The simple sensor circuit described by Ng Beng Kiat seems to give the best results.
On his web site (http://www.np.edu.sg/alpha/nbk/) Beng Kiat describes Min4, one of his recent mice. In there is a PDF with schematics for the mouse. The sensor circuit for Primus is essentially the same except for ...
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Thursday, July 19th, 2007
The Allegro SLA7062M stepper driver is a excellent choice for a versatile and robust stepper motor driver.
This device will let you drive a unipolar stepper motor at voltages up to 46 Volts and 3A per phase. It employs an internal PWM control of motor current which is can be ...
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