Chief Delphi - Open Source IMU designed for FIRST robotics

Quote:

Originally Posted by Danny Diaz (Post 1386204)

This nav6 thread was recently "found" by some of my students who are interested in giving this guy a shot. However, I'm concerned about its compatibility with the new roboRIO controller. Does the RS232 on the nav6 require any pins other than the RXD and TXD pins - these are the only 2 RS232 pins available on the roboRIO (other than a ground reference).

Thanks!
-Danny

There will be two ways to interface the Nav6 w/the RoboRio:

- USB: using a RS-232 to USB adapter cable
- RS-232: using RX, TX signals and ground

As you noted, the RoboRio will have 3 pins for RS-232: RX, TX and ground. We're working on getting cables made for sale at the kauailabs store that we plan to have for sale before the 2015 season starts, but making a cable is pretty straightforward.

Also note that in *both* cases, you need to also provide separate power/ground. The nav6 has onboard voltage regulation, and you can feed unregulated voltage (6-16V DC) to it. The wiring will be similar to the typical CRio configuration, with the nav6 wired directly to the power distribution board.

If you'd like, checkout the Nav6 schematics, too. You can view them with Eagle PCB, which is a free download.

You may note on the nav6 schematic the DTR signal is also present on the RS-232 connector, however this signal is not required and is used only to support downloading new firmware to the nav6 from the Arduino IDE running on a PC. The DTR signal is *not* needed to communicate with the CRio or the RoboRio.

Finally, on the software side, we will be qualifying the C++, Java and Labview code w/the 2015 FRC libraries when they are available. FIRST has stated that the existing library interfaces (the nav6 uses the serial port) will be maintained, so it *should* just work :). But of course that will need to be tested and that's a top priority for us - as soon as we get ahold of the RoboRio and the libraries.