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Unread 30-06-2014, 15:43
skatefriday skatefriday is offline
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Re: [FTC]: What is the reason teams are not allowed to connect Arduino directly to NX

Last year our team used an Atmel ATMega328 with the Arduino
boot loaded burned onto it and powered it from the Hitechnic
protoboard.

Note that there's nothing in the rules that states you can't
use an Arduino, you just need to make sure you don't draw
too much current from the protoboard and of course off the
shelf Arduinos draw way too much current. Using a barebones
ATMega328 and running at a slow clock speed, we were able
to get power draw down to 4mA, from 25mA+ in a full Arduino.

Google low-power arduino for more information.

On the subject of I2C interfaces the NXT communicates
with the protoboard over I2C, but the protoboard has no
native support for assuming the master role and hence
can't act as the master to an Arduino slave out of
the box.

Theoretically, you should be able to bitbang from the
protoboard to the Arduino and I have that on my list of
things to work on if I ever get any free time for that sort
of thing. But until then, you are limited as to the
amount of communication you can do.
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