TechHOUNDS roboRIO Expansion Board

[Swiezy868]

Originally Posted by otherguy

Looks like you put some thought into protection as well, 3 resettable fuses on board. I haven't gone through the schematic closely yet to look at everything closely, so sorry if its obvious, but would you be able to elaborate on what gyro this is designed to work with and how how it is interfaced to the roborio (serial, through arduino?)?

The board is designed to work with any 3-wire analog gyro which has a pinout of GND-5V-SIG, but it is optimized to work with the gyro provided in last year's KOP because the 2 bolt holes on the board are designed to match the mounting holes on that gyro.

As far as communication is concerned, the board is able to interface with the roboRIO using 3 different protocols (UART, SPI, I2C). Each method of communication can be enabled/disabled using on board DIP switches. For example the UART bus has 2 wires between the roboRIO and the atmega32u4 (TX, RX); therefore, there is a DIP switch in line with each of those wires to enable/disable UART communication. Overall there are 8 DIP switches to control the 8 communication lines (UART-TX, UART-RX, SPI-MISO, SPI-MOSI, SPI-SCK, SPI-CS, I2C-SDA, I2C-SCL) that go between the roboRIO and atmega32u4 to support the 3 different methods of communication. If you look at the bottom of the schematic this should make a little more sense.

Originally Posted by otherguy

If I understand the proposed rules for the MXP correctly I think you're fine to have the active components on the board (if its not one of the 'approved' boards) as long as you don't also control output devices (like motor controllers). Correct me if I've misunderstood what they've outlined.

The Arduino outputs provided on the board were implemented more for controlling LEDs and other nonessential portions of the robot. As long as the Arduino outputs aren't used to cause/control motion, I believe the board should be legal even without approval from FIRST.