Quote:
Originally Posted by nuttle
This isn't a good fit for the Jag, but for teams wanting another way to interface an encoder, this part is a good choice and sets up an interesting software project. |
Last Fall, we had a few discussions about adding a chip like this to this project. Looked at an Arduino-compatible chip, thinking we could find a scope to meet the creep. With the current control system, the only way we could see this as adding value would be if we also included a CAN transceiver. At that point, you're probably already using Jaguars, which have everything you need for a simple encoder without needing to have a counter chip.
If you use a chip like this, you would have to use I2C to make it practical. It would also need an easy way to change the address, so it does not conflict with the existing accelerometers that can use I2C. If you used SPI or RS-232, then you would only have one encoder per robot. You could hang more off of an onboard laptop or Raspberry PI, but that would probably violate current rules.
In the end, we figured we could expand in this direction if it made more sense in the future. I guess we'll find out in August if it would just be cool to play with, or more useful for the next system.
This is the engineer's conundrum of doing it because you can versus canning it because you should.