Using Digital Sidecar?

[Dominick Ferone]

Andy Mark is currently out of stock with the Rev Robotivs more board. Would we be able to use a digital side car in order to get more Digital IO ports?

[cgmv123]

Potentially, yes. You'd have to figure out which pins in the ribbon cable correspond to the pins in the DSC and route those to the appropriate MXP pins. (There might still be a DSC schematic somewhere on usfirst.org.)

Note the DSC would be considered an ACTIVE DEVICE and since it's not listed in R58 as an approved ACTIVE DEVICE, it can't be used to control motors or servos via the MXP.

[Dominick Ferone]

We would be using it for drive encoders.

[adciv]

Given what I know about the Digital Sidecar, I don't think you'd be gaining anything unless you installed a cRIO on the robot as well. From what I remember, all the IO pins basically wend directly to the module on the cRIO.

If you need more than the 10 IO and can't get an expansion board, I'd recommend using a multiplexer .
Example: https://www.sparkfun.com/products/9056

Alternatively you can use an A2D as below for inputs over I2C. That might be the easier method.
http://www.adafruit.com/products/1083

[bobbysq]

Originally Posted by cgmv123

Note the DSC would be considered an ACTIVE DEVICE and since it's not listed in R58 as an approved ACTIVE DEVICE, it can't be used to control motors or servos via the MXP.

Would it if you don't power it? I was under the impression that the Digital Sidecar was just a breakout, and the power input was because cRIO cards needed to be powered individually.

Edit: Looking at the schematic, it seems that it is mostly a breakout aside from the relay and I2C slots.