Stuffination

I’ve started thinking about a design for a new Fun With Robots board.  The current board (Firefly 1.0 by Botrics) has a serial connection, built in motor driver, 2 buttons, potentiometer, tricolor LED and a buzzer.   I’ve created an updated version of the Firefly that replaces the serial connection with a USB connection.

My board, dubbed FWRv1 will have an upgraded feature set, some of which are based on what is rumored to be in the Firefly 2 board.  We are currently unsure when the Firefly 2 board will become available, and it will be easier for us to maintain our own boards for the future of the class.

Thus far the feature set I am aiming for in this board is very similar to the Firefly (2 buttons, tricolor LED, potentiometer, buzzer and built in motor driver) plus some additional features.  These additional features include things like USB connection (instead of serial), possible recharging of batteries via USB, additional I/O and the possibility of adding an LCD (which would require the additional added I/O).

Right now I’m planning on using either the Atmel Atmega32, the Atmega640 or the Atmega1281.  The Atmega1281 would have the additional required I/O for driving and LCD on its own.  Otherwise, the Atmega32 or Atmega640 could drive a serial enabled LCD as well as provide additional I/O ports.

Or, I may not actually upgrade the processor.  Instead I may take away some servo ports and use them instead for a serial enabled LCD.  Another option may be to contact Botrics to get the information (schematic/board design) of the Firefly 2.

Finishing the Firefly 2 would most likely be the easiest option and would allow me to focus my efforts elsewhere.

Believe it or not, it didn’t take me, a Mechanical Engineer no less, very long to swap out the serial chip for a USB one.  The USB one required some additional lovin’.  Meaning I had to add a capacitor to the board, but, given that a mini-USB port is much smaller than a serial port, I had plenty of room to spare.  Now I need to get someone who knows what they’re actually doing to look at it to make sure it makes sense.

Depending on what they say I might make a few changes.  I might make a few additional revisions anyway.  Even if I’m “done” changing the boards design, I still have quite a bit of work to do.  I still need to actually build one to make sure it works and I will need to take the current library for the board and update it to reflect the changes I have made.  Hopefully I can get my updates confirmed and order this board so I can start testing it.

Here is a view of the board:

Pretty isn’t it?

I’ve begun re designing the controller board for Carnegie Mellon’s StuCo class Fun With Robots.

The current board, the Firefly, designed by Botrics, has some issues with it that we would like to have resolved.  First off, the boards we get from Botrics are sometimes inconsistent in design within a batch.  By redesigning the board, we can guarantee the boards are consistent across a whole class worth.  In addition to the inconsistencies, I will be adding some new features and upgrading some components.

The big upgrade I will be doing is replacing the serial connection with a USB connection.  I may also replace the motor driver and upgrade the microcontoller.

For now I’m just going to redesign the board.  In the future I may try to create my own new board.