Serial Port and Custom Circuit
 

Haha! I can't resist gloating a little bit, sorry everyone... At the very least, perhaps this will make you aware of a (major?) rules change... Apparently FIRST does listen to reason and change the rules accordingly. I asked them to relax the restriction on connecting the custom circuit to the RC's programming port and they did it! Now all us programmers get MORE toys to play with! And we can move some processing off-board. Parallel processing all the way, baby.

Yea the very least that we will have is a current sensing circuit and an LCD

Are there any documents on how exactly we are supposed to interface with this board? (Not physically, I'm looking for code-wise interface)

Yes. Read the documentation for the DEBUG command. Also, RoboCon's bsx file contains SERIN and SEROUT commands that talk directly to this port.

--Rob

Yes! go to the parallax website. they have some great documentation. Use the SEROUT and SERIN commands. also any book about Basic Stamps will explain things.

me: imagine this program:
serin 'from IFI
serout 'to athalon
serin 'from athalon
serout 'to IFI
Jeff (another team member): hahaha
Jeff: can you get one for $200?
Me: easily
Jeff: i think i have a 600mhz duron sitting around at home

If this had been legal earlier, my custom circuit plans would have been a lot more complex. It is much easier to I/O data serially to another micro then either through the digital inputs or the analog inputs.

Well said, Joe. That's the reason I went on my little campaign in the first place. The thing is, you'd probably have much more luck with 2 or 3 PIC micros than one Athlon. The Athlon might be able to do a ton more processing, but it still has the bottleneck of 9600 baud back to the IFI controller. Now, if there were only a way to tap directly into the stamps I/O, instead of using it as a router... But that requires removal of the cover on the RC O:-)

You can use whatever baud rate you want. Look at the documentation for SERIN and SEROUT and you'll see the ways to set it to what you want.

But you can't use anything beyond 9600 baud because that's too much incoming data for the Stamp to handle. It has no memory/buffer to store the data. 9600 is more than enough. In fact, I'd recommend using something lower just to be on the safe side.

BTW if u are trying to connect a pic to the serial port be sure to use a serial driver chip such as the MAX232. Tell me how ur attempts go. Im thinking of just simply connecting a 4x16 LCD to the port to be able to debug my programs and to allow me to build a GUI for selecting "mini programs" and adjust other settings using inout from pushbuttons. Good luck

I just ordered some free samples of TI's MAX232Ns, this morning. They should arrive tomorrow.

TI will give you free samples of almost any product they have, and they ship UPS Red (overnight). They'll give you either 1, 2, or 3 pieces per part #, and you're limited to three different part #s.

I bought a couple BS2p's (1 BS2p40 and 1 BS2p24) for playing around, recently, and I'm having more than a little fun just thinking of what's possible.

I've been mulling over a dashboard interpreter using a character LCD display driven by one of the BS2p's.

Fun projects abound.

yea i would order some stamps and such but my team prolly won't give me the money to do anything interesting. But i happen to have a couple crystalfontz LCDs lying around. I am also making a current sense circuit. If i had my way i would either order some of those javelin stamps or some pics and a C compiler. Tell me how things go.

Heh. I had CrystalFontz in mind when I thought up the dashboard veiwer, in the first place. :)

They have some very attractive character LCDs. Too bad their cheaper onese are parallel, rather than serial driven, but if it's just taking serial data in the first place, you don't have much need for access to a whole lot of I/O pins, so you can spare them for parallel operation.

yea i have a Crystalfontz Crystalfontz 634 on one of my computers and a Crystalfontz 633 on another. They are great.

I have a couple LCD displays right now, which I'm going to screw around with for a while, but I was mostly considering using the exotic colored displays (yellow on dark blue, light red on dark red, white on blue).

You already have some good ones, but for me, sinking another $60 into a serial LCD is a little steep, when I could pay just as much for two attractive 4x20s (I'm almost becoming comfortable with my soldering ability not to worry at all about just frying these things :p).