Alternative Board for OI development

Technical Programming
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Each year our team creates an OI (operator interface) based on the TI LaunchPad. During this last season we wanted a larger number of digital inputs and outputs, but there was not a configuration for the launch pad that met our needs. So, we created an alternative to the TI Launch Pad based on the Infineon CY8CPROTO-062-4343W development kit.

Full disclosure, I work for Infineon so I chose this board because I understand the board, the device, and the software well.

The required firmware and instructions is located at github (GitHub - sjcbulldog/frchid2).

In the release directory there is a PDF that shows how to use this device as an OI device. If you just want to use it as is, everything you need is in the release directory. If you want to see how it is implemented or change things for your needs, the directory contains the firmware source code as well. In the release directory, there is a file XeroHID.pdf that explains both how to just use the device and, if you desired, how to make changes.

Our electrical team tested this last night and it seems to work well, but we will continue to do more testing and update as necessary.

Note, this board is built so that parts of it can be snapped off. This is important to free the IO pins on the device for this purpose. Note the picture in the document and snap off all parts of the board except the “programmer” portion.

The board can be found at both Mouser and Digikey.

Thanks
Team 1425, Error Code Xero

2 Likes
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If I remember correctly, the DS data packet(where inputs are sent to the robot) has a limit to the number of inputs it can handle per controller. Are you actually able to use all 24 digital inputs? Have you tested that at all?

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Yes. We can see all 24 inputs in the robot code. They are not visible on the DS but are in the robot code.

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I got confused by the Infineon name - they bought Cypress in 2020, this is a PSoC 6 dev board for folks familiar with PSoC.

Glad to have non-TI options showing up in FRC projects :slight_smile: TI is brutal with their commercial licensing terms after giving free equipment to students and researchers.

There are also “pro grade” Arduino and rpi products popping up these days. I haven’t gone deep in trying to evaluate their marketing claims.

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