ANNOUNCING: navX MXP Robotics Navigation Sensor

[taichichuan]

Originally Posted by slibert

Press Release - January 2, 2015
KauaiLabs, Inc. announces the navX MXP Robotics Navigation Sensor

• 9-Axis Sensor (Gyro / Accelerometer / Magnetometer)
• Intelligent Motion Processor
• RoboRIO Expansion I/O

Supercharge your robot: Field-oriented drive, auto-balancing, collision detection, motion detection, auto-rotate-to-angle, and more…

Expand your RoboRIO: 10 Digital I/Os (GPIO / PWM / Quad Encoders), 4 Analog Inputs, 2 Analog Outputs, and TTL UART / I2C / SPI ports.

Plug-n-Play: easily installed via RoboRIO’s MXP Expansion connector or USB port.

Open Source: firmware source code, board schematics/layout & bill of materials available online.

Easy-to-integrate: C++, Java and LabView libraries and sample application code simplify integration.

Backwards-compatible: existing nav6 users can upgrade easily.

********

In late 2013, Kauailabs released the nav6 Open Source Inertial Measurement Unit, providing high-accuracy measures of pose (yaw/pitch/roll), with minimal yaw drift of ~1 degree per minute - performance far exceeding the analog gyro included in the FRC Kit of Parts. nav6 was used by several teams at the 2014 FIRST Championships for features including field-oriented drive.

Now, Kauailabs announces the navX MXP Robotics Navigation Sensor, which takes nav6 technology to the next level in two significant ways.

First, navX MXP was designed to use the RoboRIO MXP Expansion Connector - enabling plug-n-play installation on the National Instruments RoboRIO, and adding digital, analog I/O and UART / SPI / I2C port expansion.

Second, navX MXP features a 32-bit ARM processor, the new Invensense MPU-9250 sensor system-on-chip, and software algorithms which take nav6 technology to the next level, including enhanced sensor calibration and algorithms which fuse gyro, accelerometer and magnetometer data into a “9-axis heading”. The “9-axis heading” is enabled by magnetometer calibration tools (available online at no cost) and magnetometer disturbance detection and data fusion algorithms. This capability is known within the aerospace industry as an “Attitude/Heading Reference System” (AHRS). Kauailabs brings this high-tech AHRS capability to FIRST FRC teams - to use, learn and explore. navX MXP is a key component of Kauailabs’ ongoing efforts to make state-of-the-art navigation technologies used in autonomous vehicles (e.g., the Google Car) available to robotics students and enthusiasts as low-cost, open-source products.

navX MXP will be available for puchase online a few days after the 2015 FIRST FRC build season kickoff at AndyMark and Kauailabs. MSRP is $99.

More details available in the navX MXP datasheet and at https://code.google.com/p/navx.

Unfortunately, the examples fail to build in the 2016 control system betas. The compiler complains about:

"invalid new expression of abstract class type 'AHRS'" and dies a horrible death.

[slibert]

Originally Posted by taichichuan

Unfortunately, the examples fail to build in the 2016 control system betas. The compiler complains about:

"invalid new expression of abstract class type 'AHRS'" and dies a horrible death.

Yes, the current NavX-MXP libraries are compatible with the 2015 WPI Libraries. A breaking change was introduced in the beta 2016 WPI libraries.

Work is underway to update the NavX-MXP C++ and Java libraries and sample code to work with the as-yet-unreleased 2016 WPI Libraries.

A post on this forum will announce when that 2016 WPI Library-compatibility is available, and will occur sometime before kickoff.

[taichichuan]

Thanks! We're looking forward to seeing the updates!

[taichichuan]

If you need someone to help test the updates with the 2016 Beta libraries, we'd be happy to help.

Mike A.
FRC #116

[slibert]

Originally Posted by taichichuan

If you need someone to help test the updates with the 2016 Beta libraries, we'd be happy to help.

Mike A.
FRC #116

Hi Mike,

Beta versions of the navX-MXP C++/Java Libraries which are compatible the 2016 Beta WPI Libraries (C++/Java) are now available for testing. Anyone interested can PM me for details on getting a copy of the beta libraries.

The functional changes are:

- C++/Java: navX-MXP Libraries compiled w/latest 2016 WPI FRC beta libraries.
- C++/Java: I2C transfer sizes, previously limited to 7 bytes/transfer in the WPI Library, have been increased. The navX-MXP libraries now transfer all I2C data in a single bus read transaction, increasing performance.

Not yet changed:

- Java: to link w/the navX-MXP Java library, the WPI Library's build.properties file must be edited, as described in these directions. This additional step will be removed before the final release of the navX-MXP C++/Java Libraries for 2016.

[Jonathan L.]

Originally Posted by taichichuan

Unfortunately, the examples fail to build in the 2016 control system betas. The compiler complains about:

"invalid new expression of abstract class type 'AHRS'" and dies a horrible death.

Just to make things clear: Is this just a problem with C++/Java? Is the 2016 beta navX LabVIEW code working? If not will it be updated by kickoff? Thank you!

[slibert]

Originally Posted by Jonathan L.

Just to make things clear: Is this just a problem with C++/Java? Is the 2016 beta navX LabVIEW code working? If not will it be updated by kickoff? Thank you!

Yes, the previously reported compile problem when used with the 2016 FRC beta was limited to C++ and Java, and a fix for that issue is now in beta.

LabView is good to go. James Parks, the creator of the new V2 LabView NavX-MXP Library (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...highlight=NavX) has successfully tested the LabView library against the 2016 Beta, and indicates it works fine with the SPI, I2C and TTL UART interfaces.

The only further work remaining is to deal with an issue found when testing the USB interface against the FRC 2016 beta image/library.

So give it a go and let us know how it goes. The SPI interface is highly recommended.

[Jonathan L.]

My team is not a beta testing team, so I can't test it until build season. Anyway, we got the navX working with the 2015 FRC LabVIEW software recently. Looking forward to using it next year!

[slibert]

The navX-MXP Java and C++ Libraries have been updated to work w/the new 2016 WPI Libraries. And the Zebracorns have released an updated LabView library for 2016. The latest build of all these libraries is available now.

In addition, Team Shockwave has created a C# RoboRIO Library that also features a navX-MXP Library.

And there are more examples than ever both in the examples provided with the C++, Java and LabVIEW Libraries, as well as in the recent team code releases, including those of team 2465 (Kauaibots).

And we've heard wind of a Python RoboRIO Library being developed as well - we'll let you know when more details are available on that.

KauaiLabs wishes everyone an incredible 2016 build season!

[topgun]

Where is the CAD file for the MXP located? I downloaded the zip file, checked Git, but I still don't see the actual CAD file for the board itself. I am looking for the SolidWorks CAD file.

Thank you.

[Jonathan L.]

Originally Posted by topgun

Where is the CAD file for the MXP located? I downloaded the zip file, checked Git, but I still don't see the actual CAD file for the board itself. I am looking for the SolidWorks CAD file.

Thank you.

Get the download from this page http://www.pdocs.kauailabs.com/navx-mxp/software/

The CAD files are in the zip file; no need to install everything. I don't see a Solidworks model there, but there are several SketchUp files and an STL file.

[schleprock]

Originally Posted by slibert

The only further work remaining is to deal with an issue found when testing the USB interface against the FRC 2016 beta image/library.

we just received a couple of the navx's and we want to use the USB port as our roborio is mounted on the side of the robot in a verticle position. i tried the DataMonitor example and i can see everything when we plug the navx into the mxp port. but i see nothing when we connect it via USB. i changed Port parameter to the AHRS constructor to SerialPort.Port.kUSB but no output to the smartdashboard. it doesn't throw an exception, so the AHRS class instance is getting constructed. there's just doesn't seem to be any communication. is the issue you refer to? and is it going to be fixed anytime soon?

thanks