Penguin on a Leash
Penguin on a Leash
No Repair, Don't Despair!
If you were lucky to take advantage of this special Penguin offer, you got a great deal with two new style Penguins. These Penguins come with a board repair kit so the robot will function without the USB cable. However, for those that did not install the repair, don't despair!
http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php?129018-The-March-of-the-Penguins-Closed!/page8
http://forums.parallax.com/entry.php...-some-Penguins
It's likely that Penguin will spend the majority of his life on your desktop, and, if your desktop is an average one, the roaming distance of Penguin will be under 3-feet. Welcome to the USB shade-cable. This is the cable that retracts like a window shade. It's 2-feet 8-inches long, which is 32-inches, almost a full yard. Plus this cable is thin and light weight! It's perfect for running Penguin on the desktop!
http://www.parallax.com/
Penguin's USB shade-cable is light-
weight and thin, perfect for running
the new style Penguins without the
board fix in place.
No Repair, Don't Despair!
If you were lucky to take advantage of this special Penguin offer, you got a great deal with two new style Penguins. These Penguins come with a board repair kit so the robot will function without the USB cable. However, for those that did not install the repair, don't despair!
http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php?129018-The-March-of-the-Penguins-Closed!/page8
http://forums.parallax.com/entry.php...-some-Penguins
It's likely that Penguin will spend the majority of his life on your desktop, and, if your desktop is an average one, the roaming distance of Penguin will be under 3-feet. Welcome to the USB shade-cable. This is the cable that retracts like a window shade. It's 2-feet 8-inches long, which is 32-inches, almost a full yard. Plus this cable is thin and light weight! It's perfect for running Penguin on the desktop!
http://www.parallax.com/
Penguin's USB shade-cable is light-
weight and thin, perfect for running
the new style Penguins without the
board fix in place.
Comments
That's a spam post you're responding to.
-Phil
So no leash is needed, just plug in the bird and it starts running. This will make it slightly hard to work up the courage to put him under the x-acto knife.
I also need to tweak the length of the control rods as I think they are a smidge to long. I scratched one foot slightly adjusting it earlier, so courage is need here too.
Looking at the pin assignment, I notice that the compass and the LED each have their own clock and data lines. I thought with three wire serial you could share those with more than one device. It was only the enable line that needs to be unique per device.
- on a leash
- with a motherboard modification
- by judiciously unplugging the leash
- attaching a power boost battery to usb port
Zappman has added a USB battery so enough power is delivered to the motherboard and thus the mod can be averted.http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php?129738-Get-your-Penguin-working-without-modifing-the-circuit-card.
The rods in the feet were too long in my Penguins too. With only hand tools, it's a challenge to get the ends flat and at 90 degrees to the rod side. I tried sandpaper and a metal file. Finally I used a board to hold the rod perpendicular and this was helpful.
Martin, is it possible to use the existing port to attach more than one device?
Humanoido, by port do you mean the two free I/O pins? I would guess that you could use them to create an I2C bus and hook up multiple I2C devices. The 2PX contains support for it, so it should just work. All the Lego NXT stuff is really I2C, so a Penguin using a Lego color sensor seems doable. I've been meaning to try Lego to Propeller for a while now.
But I was talking about synchronous serial pin sharing. Let's say you want to hook up multiple synchronous serial devices. Each device needs a clock, en, and data in. According to the HM55B's documentation, it can share clock and data in, as long as it has its own en line. Basically it ignores clock and data in if en isn't set. So after reading the schematic I found it interesting that they weren't shared given the docs I read.
Martin, that's fantastic! Maybe you can work up a circuit for us and test it?
The hard part is knowing the protocol for the device you want to exchange data with. To that end I checked the Lego web site for the technical docs for their color sensor. Unfortunately, they only have the docs for their old analog light sensor, not the new color sensor. They do have the docs for their version of Ping which is I2C, so maybe I can try it with that if I get time.
As for synchronous serial sharing data lines. I have two synchronous serial devices. My compass and line scan camera. I never had cause to hook them up at the same time, but I suppose I could give it a try. The rest of my sensors are async serial or I2C.
BTW The documentation issue is one reasons I switched from Lego to Parallax gear. It's not that Lego is closed and doesn't like you poking around. But they often have annoying gaps which leave you hanging when you want to leave the walled garden.