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Help in picking a controller — Parallax Forums

Help in picking a controller

FRC2370FRC2370 Posts: 128
edited 2013-12-13 18:52 in Robotics
For a school project I'm building the legs of an exo-skeleton, adding in arms later on. It will need to control 4 leg motors (CTRE Talons - PWM) and take signals from these sensors for each motor (https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11776) to drive them. Which controller is best suited - Arduino, Propeller, or VEX Cortex (http://www.vexrobotics.com/vex/products/accessories/logic/276-2194.html)

I only have experience programming an Arduino, so which is easiest overall and provide the best performance?

Comments

  • prof_brainoprof_braino Posts: 4,313
    edited 2013-12-07 11:08
    FRC2370 wrote: »
    I only have experience programming an Arduino, so which is easiest overall and provide the best performance?

    Since you have experience with Arduino, that might be a good place to start.
    For best performance, I would guess the prop would be your best bet.
    If you want to do a whole bunch of extra processing besides sensors and actuators, maybe the Cortex would be a good idea.

    It all depend on the DETAILS of what you think you want to do. You might consider choosing the processor AFTER you wokr out exactly waht you want to do. But depending on your experience, you might not be able to work out what you want until you've already finished (the first time). So you will probably d have to do it backwards, and start on an arbitrary processor until you get a good handle on what you actually want and how to do it.

    In my case, I always start with the prop, as it is very powerful and very flexible, and propforth, as it it very flexible and quick development. After the details of the actual problem are known, its a simple matter of selecting a process that matches the need.
  • FRC2370FRC2370 Posts: 128
    edited 2013-12-13 06:11
    Since just the legs are being built for now, it just needs to be able to drive the sensors and motor controllers quickly. Once the upper section is built I'm thinking of adding a display on one of the arms to display telemetry such as battery voltage, ambient temperature, and backpack internal temperature (where all the control systems will live once the upper section is built). So i guess my question is which control could handle operating 6-8 motor controllers, 6-8 sensors, plus the lcd and monitoring easily?
  • rogersydrogersyd Posts: 223
    edited 2013-12-13 18:52
    The prop would work fo' sho'. But I have no experience with the other options you mentioned. So there is that...
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