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Originally Posted by sparksandtabs
I am referring to the stk500. But I also have the stk503 that can run 100 pin chips. Also doesn't the IFI system have 2 processors? So if I were to actually try to make a new system I could use 2 procesors, right? So I could run a ATMEGA128 or ATMEGA2560 and with one chip I could emulate most of the features on the IFI system. Also I would outsource somethings, such as PWM because I think it would make the code run better, though using a USART you would only need a set of 3 charaters to set the pwm. It would require less timers and less general code to run them. Also I would want to use the IFI radios just because I think it would make it easier then finding a whole new wireless communication system.
I don't think I could do this myself, that is why I asked a couple of electrical and software engineers to help me work things out with this. I don't think it will be completely easy but I do think it is possible.
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A single atmega 128 won't be able to re-create what they do with 2 chips - mainly due to the lack of UART's (Atmel doesn't seem to understand the synchronous thing) - we use 3 of the 4 as far as i can tell on the microchips. (Radio on master, program and TTL on user). Especially if you use one of the UART's to "outsource" PWM generation, you would have to find a way to share the program and radio ports, unless you forced everyone to use ISP. I think you would be better off using I2C or SPI for the secondary PWM generation.
I did have the pleasure of using Brian Dean's MAVRIC (
www.bdmicro.com) on the real time scoring system I developed for Battlecry, and it was a nice change from the Microchip's - but I don't think the Atmega128 provides significantly more than the high-end 8-bit PIC in the RC. (And yes it was overkill for the RTS system, but we had a board laying around).