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Can MSRDS control Eddie's Aux Switched Ports and extra IO — Parallax Forums

Can MSRDS control Eddie's Aux Switched Ports and extra IO

robobillrobobill Posts: 12
edited 2013-03-11 09:56 in Robotics
My bot (www.autocourtdryer.com) uses the Eddie control board and motor kit. I'm trying to use MSRDS VPL to control it. Making it go and turn is NBD, but I'd like to also have access to the extro IO and the AUX switched power ports but don't know how to.

Any advise would be appreciated.

Thanks

Comments

  • jdoleckijdolecki Posts: 726
    edited 2013-03-08 10:52
    I believe the blink command will control the aux port if you set the rate to 0

    http://www.parallax.com/Portals/0/Downloads/docs/prod/robo/eddie/550-28990-Eddie-Command-Set-v1.2.pdf
  • robobillrobobill Posts: 12
    edited 2013-03-08 14:02
    OK thanks... now how would I do a blink command (or any other Eddie command) thru MSRDS? Hint ... I'm a real MSRDS beginner... so hopefully there is a nice tutorial somewhere
  • jdoleckijdolecki Posts: 726
    edited 2013-03-09 05:54
    HA

    there are hardly any tutorials on MSRS or Eddie commands

    Your best hope is to keep working at it or look at some pre written code and modify it to do what you want
  • RobotWorkshopRobotWorkshop Posts: 2,307
    edited 2013-03-09 06:19
    I haven't tried these yet but it looks like the Eddie firmware has commands to configure the I/O pins on the board and then read or set them as needed. From the docs it appears that you set a 32-bit bitmask which tells the firmware what pins to use. To start you would configure what pins to use as inputs using the IN command, configure what pins as outputs OUT command,

    Once that is done you can use the LOW or HIGH commands to set the state of an I/O pins low or high and use the READ command to get the state of the pins.
  • TLCTLC Posts: 74
    edited 2013-03-11 09:56
    Hi robobill,

    So, VPL is a little confusing from several aspects. From the Eddie perspective there is a sort of hierarchy in place. Microsoft defined the MARK platform as a standard for their RDS with Kinect. You can read about the specification in the documentation that comes with RDS. Parallax developed Eddie in response to this specification. If you look at one of the manifests for Eddie you see that the c is a partner of MARK. All this really means is that if you want to interface with only the MARK specification you use that in VPL and get differential drive, wheel encoders, IR and Ping sensors. The MARK specification does not reference additional I/O ports but if you use the Parallax2011ReferencePlatformIoController service in VPL you now have access to (almost) all of these ports. Drag the service onto the VPL diagram and then grab a data block (really almost anything that generates a message will work) and connect the two. The connections dialog box will appear, and select "Set Pin." The Data Connections dialog box will appear and under "Target" you will see "PinState" with a plus in front of it. Select the plus and you will see a number of options including PinState and PinDirection. Check the "Edit values directly" check box and you can set it assigning a pin number and using the GpioPinDirection and GpioPinSignal constants.

    Believe it or not, getting to the three AUX switched ports is harder and requires that you have C# installed because you need to change the Parallax2011ReferencePlatformIoController service and recompile. Let me know if you need that info.

    Some general information on RDS and Eddie can be found on my blog at http://roboticsathome.wordpress.com.

    Todd
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