Hello,
I am a member of a college team in a NASA robotics competition, wherein we use the FRC ecosystem.
I am currently trying to spec out strain gauges for my team’s robot as we need to record weight applied in a given area. I am relatively new to working with communication protocols other than CAN, and as such am not entirely sure how I should wire this to the RoboRIO, as well as what protocol I am intended to use. I understand how it would wire to an arduino, but am struggling with understanding how to convert this knowledge to the RoboRIO. Below is a link to the strain gauge and strain gauge amplifier that I am currently looking at, however if someone could possibly give me advice regarding wiring and how to read the data from it on the RoboRIO, it would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!
The HX711 looks like it outputs just a raw serial data stream and wants about an 11 MHz clock. The Rio internals are technically capable of this (the FPGA), but there’s no standard FRC FPGA image implementation for this interface. It would be easiest to use an Arduino to bit bang the serial interface and convert it to something more standard the Rio can talk to like SPI or a normal UART serial port.
There are strain gauge modules that out pit 0 to 5 volts and simplify the programming. We used them with great success to measure the pull back force of our catapult.