IFI Controllers

[nwagers]

I know that the RC contains the BS2SX, but I've never seen any documentation on the other things inside of it. Can anyone give me a glimpse "under the hood" of the two controllers in the kit?

[Ryan Meador]

I have no offical info on anything in there, but I have been able to infer a lot about the circuitry from the way it behaves (not to mention I opened one of our old ones that broke...). There's all kinds of fun stuff in there, but the guts are two PIC microcontrollers, if memory serves. I don't recall if the ADC is on the PICs or seperate... They're really surprisingly empty inside I know somehow the "unused" I/O pins on the Stamp are connected to something that makes the LEDs and seven segment displan on the OI work. And, of course, there's no need to know any of this in order to make it work.

[rbayer]

You are correct: the specifics are unimportant. However, I found that I understood the reasons for stuff in programming a lot better after having a general understanding. Here's the quick and dirty on the RC:

The digital ins, the analog ins, and the data from the radio are all connected to the Master Processor (Master uP).

The master uP is connected to the BS2SX. This is what we program and the only part of the system we can control. The connection is RS-232 (62500 baud, 8n1) and connects directly to one of the Stamp's I/O pins.

The BS2SX is then connected to the Output uP via another one of its pins. Again this is RS-232 (62500 baud, 8n1).

The output uP is in turn connected to the PWMs, relays, and I believe it also connects back to the Master uP in order to send this data back to the OI. The Output uP is what creates timing signals for the PWMs, and relays. The LEDs are connected semi-directly to the BS2SX. That is why you can do "HIGH 7" to turn on the BASIC RUN LED.

Anyway, if you poke around the InnovationFirst website, there's some block diagrams showing general data flow, etc.