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Boe-Bot master-slave architecture — Parallax Forums

Boe-Bot master-slave architecture

bob_sabbionetabob_sabbioneta Posts: 1
edited 2007-09-30 04:56 in Robotics
Hi All,
I'm a newcomer into the robotic as well as Boe-Bot products. I wonder to know if it is possible to drive the microcontroller of the Boe-Bot robot by another uC programmed by myself. If so, where can I find documentation regarding the communication between the robot controller and a custom external chip?

Thank you

Comments

  • Mike GreenMike Green Posts: 23,101
    edited 2007-09-30 04:56
    The Boe-Bot is just a general purpose development board for the Stamp series of processors. The Boe-Bot chassis was designed to mount this board and provide servos for movement. The Boe-Bot kit includes a package of parts to add other functions to the breadboard of the the development board (like IR distance sensing, light level measurement, and contact closure sensing for object avoidance) as part of a series of learning experiences described in the manual.

    Anyway, the Stamp processors are very capable of communicating with other processors. There's a couple of Nuts and Volts columns on this subject that are downloadable from Parallax's website as well as a little bit of discussion in the Stamp Basic manual itself. The only restriction is that the Stamps are single threaded processors. They can only do one thing at a time. In particular, when they're reading sensors or controlling the servo motors, they are not listening to communications from other sources like another processor or the PC if it's still connected. This sort of thing can be gotten around a bit by interleaving different functions. For example, the servos only require a control pulse about every 20ms. The Stamp can generate an IR pulse and look for a response from the IR detector during a 20ms interval. Similarly, the Stamp can query another processor and process its reply during a 20ms interval, but an unsolicited message from the other processor will probably be missed. If it's really important to not miss messages, there are some external buffers available that will buffer up received commnications and hold it (like up to 16 or 64 bytes) until the Stamp can process it.

    You could also use a wireless communications system like XBee which is inherently buffered.
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