Category Archives: Primus

Primus in control and moving

Posted on December 4, 2007 by Peter Harrison

After a lot of messing about with other stuff, Primus is now back on track and has the basic motion code written and installed. Movement within the maze is possible with steering off the walls to prevent collisions; fixed size … Continue reading →

Posted in Primus | Tagged , | 4 Comments

Primus gets moving

Posted on November 20, 2007 by Peter Harrison

Well, it has taken a while but I have finally got the motion control properly underway. Code details will follow shortly. In the meantime, you can see the beast move on YouTube:

Posted in Primus | Tagged | 2 Comments

Feeling our way with sensors

Posted on September 19, 2007 by Peter Harrison

The sensors are a critical part of a micromouse. Primus uses six infra-red reflective sensors. Here is code to test that they are working.Now that we have a nice display to show what the sensor reading are, we can get … Continue reading →

Posted in Primus | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Adding a timer and the graphical LCD

Posted on September 18, 2007 by Peter Harrison

This is a fairly big jump. With the LEDs and buttons tested, it is time to add the main graphical display, made from a Nokia cellphone display. Also, there is the main system timer event. The simple user IO is … Continue reading →

Posted in Primus | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Revised schematics and pin functions

Posted on September 16, 2007 by Peter Harrison

After a bit more thought, there is now a new set of pin assignments for the Primus micromouse, along with a corresponding schematic.The problem with Primus was that it is not possible to generate two independant pulse trains from the … Continue reading →

Posted in Primus | Tagged , , , | 6 Comments

A bit of a change to Primus

Posted on September 9, 2007 by Peter Harrison

It seems I made a bit of a mistake in how I thought the dsPIC could drive its PWM module. Consequently, there will have to be some changes.First, what can’t change is the need to use T1CK and T2CK as … Continue reading →

Posted in Primus | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Pushing the button on Primus

Posted on September 9, 2007 by Peter Harrison

The next stage in testing the Primus hardware is to make sure the buttons are working.Building on Primus 1, the button hardware is tested in the simplest possible way. Calling the readButton() function sets a number of exported variables indicating … Continue reading →

Posted in Primus | Leave a comment

A little bit of test code

Posted on September 2, 2007 by Peter Harrison

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, … Continue reading →

Posted in Primus | Tagged , | Leave a comment

A new mouse is born

Posted on August 29, 2007 by Peter Harrison

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 … Continue reading →

Posted in Primus | Leave a comment

Primus pin functions

Posted on August 23, 2007 by Peter Harrison

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 … Continue reading →

Posted in Primus | Tagged | Leave a comment