28-02-2008 15:52

CyberWolf_22

Re: pic: Behold The Black Box

Are you planning to release any information on how to build this like the processor specs or anything. I think a lot of teams would like to know how you did this. Keep of the great work.

28-02-2008 16:01

tseres

Re: pic: Behold The Black Box

is that an 8722? because that would be funny. am i safe to assume that the black box is so that you can record what happens on your robot for troubleshooting?

28-02-2008 16:12

Stuart

Re: pic: Behold The Black Box

well be releasing the schematics and code(in the works with releasing it under GPL v2) some time after march( not that we want to keep it from teams but were all very busy with other things and don't really have time to get it all together until after LSR). the chip is a parallax propeller chip. and no it doesn't record any thing its more of an electrical / programing black box i.e. I don't care how it works or whats going on all I know Is I tell it this port is a ping sensor and it gives me a distance in inches.

and depending on how well things go this summer, you may be able to buy one(or more) of these for next season at the 50- 75ish price point(there may also be a drag and drop programing tool that develops the C code for the RC to run these things).

28-02-2008 16:27

Arkorobotics

Re: pic: Behold The Black Box

This looks great, I do like the professional "naked" look of a board, but a nice black case for this would really be nice. (adds to the name too)

If you need drivers for an Memsic Accelerometer, I have written one before, I can dig it out if you want it.

I <3 embedded systems!

28-02-2008 20:53

Mike Nawrot

Re: pic: Behold The Black Box

One of our programmers was working on a "black box" last year, but he had a lot on his plate this year (i.e. control box with built in laptop w/ GUI), so he didn't get around to making one. We were just discussing something like that at the NJ regional earlier today, since we needed to know what our IR sensors were returning in autonomous.

02-03-2008 03:39

Qbranch

Re: pic: Behold The Black Box

Sooo.... tiDSP, Freescale, Atmel, Microchip, etc.?

aka, what processor is that?

I don't understand what you mean by 'no decrease in update rate'. If you have more data comming over the same line, it will take longer for it to come through, unless you double you're baud rate each time you add another box. (double the data, double the rate = same time. double the data, same rate = double the time)

Did you guys design the PCB? If not, where'd you get it from?

-q

19-03-2008 01:43

Stuart

Re: pic: Behold The Black Box

the chip being used is a propeller chip by parallax. as far as how the protocol maintains its speed . . well I wont go in to much detail here( but I will later) I will say that if you took a token ring . . and made it a line you would have something that looks like a "black box array" as I call it.

19-03-2008 08:39

PhilBot

Re: pic: Behold The Black Box

Hi

I was attracted to this thread by it's title, but now I'm confused...

A "Black-Box" is a datalogger, used to record what happens during flight (for later analysis), but what you are describing seems more of a serial I/O device... ie: there is no mention of data storage capacity.

Is the purpose of this board to expand the RC's I/O capability, or is it truly an event logger.

I needed a data logger this year, so I used a serial flash board from SparkFun to do the job simply. Here is the white paper: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/2065

19-03-2008 17:40

lukevanoort

Re: pic: Behold The Black Box

"Black box" is also a term for something that you don't need to know the inner workings of, just the interfaces. The classic example of this meaning of "black box" is a car - the average person doesn't know how it works, but they know how to use the interfaces (shifter, gas pedal (more correctly termed the air pedal though...), brake pedal, etc.) to achieve a desired result. This board takes a whole bunch of sensor inputs and presents the result of the signal processing to the RC in a nice series of packets without requiring that the RC programmer to know how it gets the data from the sensor, the data just comes in the serial port.

19-03-2008 21:50

PhilBot

Re: pic: Behold The Black Box

OK, I get that... ie: the company called "Black Box" that makes a million different I/O devices.

But.... the original poster said: So I wondered if it really WAS a data recorder "like in an airplane".

Phil.

20-03-2008 09:21

ham90mack

Re: pic: Behold The Black Box

It looks like a sensor relay that expands the number of sensor inputs to the RC to me...