FRC hardware design

[Rickertsen2]

Originally Posted by Gdeaver

The other thing is the I2c and SPi port are not available for our use.

Would you rather both serial ports or the I2C/SPi? Personally i find 2 serial ports alot more useful.

Originally Posted by Gdeaver

Wouldn't the hardware software model be easier if the FRC had one main processor and a buss (rs485,can,rs232, etc.) There are 2 async. ports on the current processor. One port could be used for the programming and tether. The other would be for the coproc buss. why.

Well, technically speaking it wouldn't be that hard to do all of the PWMs from one processor. The main reason for having two procs is that the user processor is designed as a "sandbox" so that no matter how hard you try, there is no way to prevent the E-stop functionality from working, the team color lights from behaving oddly etc. With two procs, all the safety critical tasks are managed by the master processor and out of the programmer's control.

[Gdeaver]

AH, Rickertsen2 you said the magic 2 words - sandbox and e-stop. I've been looking at some other controllers and they are both simpler and more extensible. However the 2 above words explain IFI' s design. Thank you.