Last 10 Submissions RSS Feed

ultrasonic sensor test

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 01:04:36 +0000

A simple program that gets input from the Vex ultrasonic sensor and prints the value out to the terminal window. Here's a good video on how to use the Vex ultrasonic sensor:

test_project_11_03_11

Thu, 10 Nov 2011 17:07:16 +0000

A simple program we worked on at the Nov. 3rd robotics club meeting. The robot drives towards a wall until the bump sensor is depressed, then it drives backwards for a few seconds and then stops.

MCP2200 Windows driver

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 01:36:00 +0000

This is the Windows driver for the MCP2200. You can download this 4KB file instead of the 15MB "MCP2200 Drivers and Utilities." Just strip the ".txt" off the end of the file name before using..

PIC184550 - HD44780 LCD Framework Basic

Thu, 28 Jul 2011 20:49:54 +0000

This is the most basic HD44780 framework.

It also is the code used to generate the "bow ties are cool" text and graphics seen in the HD44780 LCD tutorial.

dsPIC Serial Communicator

Thu, 14 Jul 2011 02:29:40 +0000

dsPIC Serial Communicator

Postby Robotics Guy » Tue May 10, 2011 2:15 am
About dsPIC Serial Communicator

dsPIC Serial Communicator was the first practical program that I wrote. I used the wxWidgets toolkit for the GUI and the program was written in C++. I wrote the program because I needed a way to send data back and fourth between a PC and PIC microcontroller. The program worked wonderfully. I used it to test motors on my dsPIC Square Bot, to display the state of digital inputs, and to display and graph the values of analog inputs.

Development on this program has been discontinued for the time being. I have switched from using wxWidgets to a much better toolkit (in my opinion), the Qt toolkit. Sometime I will port the program over to Qt and make it much more flexible, allowing it to be used for many different types of microcontrollers and adding a configuration screen giving the user the ability to choose the number of digital, analog, and custom inputs that will be received, and allowing them to customize the data being sent as well. The serial protocol used in this program is also not very good, now that I look back at it, so I need to rewrite that too.

Introduction to dsPIC Serial Communicator

dsPIC Serial Communicator is designed for communication with a microcontroller through an RS-232 connection. This program can send and recieve data using a serial port on Windows.

Features:

Send/Recieve

Recieves four two-byte User Variables, uv1 .. uv4
Recieves four two-byte Analog Input Values, an1 .. an4
Recieves four one-byte Digital Input Values, dig1 .. dig4
Sends three PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) values for motor & servo control

Displaying Data

User Variables & Analog Input Values are displayed in non-editable text fields (allowing for copy operations)
User Variable names are editable in text fields
User Variable & Analog Input values can be graphed
Digital Input Values are displayed using Green (ON) and Red (OFF) bitmaps for easy recognition

Saving Data

All data - User Variables, Analog Values, Digital Values - can be exported to a CSV file
CSV (Comma Seperated Values) files can easily be imported into Excel for reviewing or creating graphs
The names you specify for your User Variables will be the column names for the respective User Variables

Although the software is not currently supported, if you're curious to see what it looks like it can still be downloaded by clicking here.

CNC Controller

Thu, 14 Jul 2011 02:29:11 +0000

CNC Controller v1

Postby Robotics Guy » Tue May 10, 2011 2:19 am
CNC Controller was written to control my CNC Machine. It's the first piece of software that I've written with the Qt Toolkit, which I am really impressed with and have found much easier to use than wxWidgets.

To use the program, the user loads an excellon drill file (exported from Eagle, or similar PCB creation software) which contains the PCB's hole coordinates. The user then uses the calibration routine to calibrate the CNC machine by selecting the two calibration holes in the program, moving the drill to the two holes, and setting the calibration points when the drill bit is directly over the holes. This is done so that the program can set a point of origin for the coordinate system, calculate the rotation of the board, and update the coordinates of the holes accordingly. After the calibration is complete, the user simply clicks the "start" button and the program takes care of the rest, controlling the drilling process.

Known Bugs:

When board is flipped ~180 degrees the coordinates of the holes have incorrect signs. (e.g. the machine moves the wrong direction. This must be due to an oversight in the math calculations in calculateGlobalCoordinates() and should be easy to fix; I just need to take the time to experiment a little with the machine and go over the math again.
Although the program has been updated to support different sized boards, there may be issues painting the board on the screen. This just needs some more work.
Because the size of a signed INT on the PIC microcontroller is two bytes, the maximum number of steps that can be sent (a.k.a. the largest coordinate) is 32767. This would create a problem for larger boards as it means with my machines stepping resolution of 200 steps/revolution, the maximum travel distance of the drill would be: (32767 steps) /(200 steps/revolution) = (163 revolutions), (163 revolutions) *(20 tpi threaded rod = 1/20 inch/revolution) = (163)*(1/20)= 8.15 inches of travel. The solution is to use a different data type of the PIC.

You will need Qt Creator to compile the project, or you can run the program by browsing to the "release" folder.

SuperMon Serial V5.5

Thu, 14 Jul 2011 02:26:53 +0000

SuperMon is a great program for sending and receiving data over a serial port. It's hard to find on the Internet, so I thought I'd mirror it here.

dsPIC30F4011 - Blinking LED

Thu, 14 Jul 2011 02:25:02 +0000

Very basic: Makes an LED blink on RB0.

dsPIC30F4011 - Serial (RS-232)

Thu, 14 Jul 2011 02:24:27 +0000

Very basic: Sends the test message "Hello World!" over the alternate UART.

dsPIC30F4011 - Motor Control PWM (MCPWM)

Thu, 14 Jul 2011 02:24:00 +0000

Very basic: Configures the dsPIC30F Motor Control PWM Module. (Read the tutorial).