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Arm cortex 32bit (LM3S8962) an Wii Motion + gyroscopes

Posted by dan on January 23, 2011 at 2:56pm

3689386357?profile=originalI see the trend for quadcopters is now to use more and more Arm 32 bit processors, which are obviously more than enough for balancing :) and have the advantage of offering enough remainin power for extra jobs.

 

Here's my attempt at interfacing a LM3S8962 (from LuminaryMicro / TI) with the Wii Motion Plus gyroscopes.

After spending some time trying to figure out how to install / work with IAR and FreeRTOS, I discovered (on this site) the CooCox environment and its real time OS, and I must say I'm much pleased with its usability and easy of use..

 

You can find HEREmore details and the C code...

 

Hope somebody finds this useful !

dan

Tags: 32bit, m3, arm, coocox, cortex, gyros, i2c, instruments, lm3s, lm3s8962
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Comments

  • Damien C June 8, 2011 at 4:21pm
    Thanks Dan for your quick answer.
    Same story here the lack of good / full examples is making it difficult to progress as you said transition from arduino to other MCUs is quite harsh for newbies like me.
    Though I haven t yet gave up make it work so I hope I ll be able to contribute to the community very soon with a working example. I pretty tried every environment starting with Keil then using freeRTOS+ eclypse + openOCD on a Mac and finally using Coocox for the simplicity of the RTOS and the IDE.
  • dan June 8, 2011 at 3:04am

    Hi Damien,

     

    No sorry, I haven't tried to control servos with it.

    I've tried to use if for my autonomous tank (http://trandi.wordpress.com/2011/05/14/tiger-1-bb-airsoft-rc-tank-%...), BUT the more I played with it the more I realised the "obvious" : the power of platforms like Arduino is really in the COMMUNITY around them !

     

    With the community come examples and information, which are priceless...

     

    I tried the other day to read the PPM signal from an RC receiver with the LM3S8962 and gave up after 1-2 days of work ! It was very frustrating as I could NOT find 1 single example of somebody else having done a similar thing...

     

    dan

     

    P.S. are you also using CooCox ?

    In any case, I'd be very interested in your code if you mange to control servos with it...

  • Damien C June 8, 2011 at 12:22am

    Hi Dan,

    I m also using a 8962 and was wondering if you tried to link it with servo motors and if you would happen to have an example ?

  • Roy Brewer January 25, 2011 at 2:32pm
    Nice job. My friend and I were looking at the Luminary LM3S1968 dev board a while ago for a quad.
  • dan January 24, 2011 at 5:30am

    no I haven't... I'm not sure it CooCox supports C++ though...

    It would be nice to encapsulate all the I2C calls in some nicer, higher level class...

  • Rafal January 24, 2011 at 4:11am

    another person using the lm3s! Im in the progress of building my IMU - lm3s808 + wii motion plus internals + diydrones 10hz gps thingo + mma7260 accel..

    The guys at luminary micro [now ti] did a great job with the documentation and driverlib.. TI sells the dev boards real cheap - the one i have has a 20pin jtag connector so i can program my board + onboard lm3s and small oled for $50 shipped!

     

    here is a pic of my board.. on the left are the wii motion plus internals.. lm3simu.JPG?width=360

     

    have you tried C++? an auto-pilot/quadcopter pretty much calls for it!

    thanks for the info, im gonna check out CooCox, and the rtos!

  • dan January 24, 2011 at 2:54am
    It's simply IF you want to build or update a quadcopter to use an Arm 32 bit processor (instead of an Arduino for example) you could use this specific processor from LuminaryMicro (there are plenty of others too !) and this post shows you how to read the data from the wii motion + gyroscopes, which again are used by plenty of people for their quads (as a cheap alternative to other models)
  • mahmood January 23, 2011 at 6:21pm
    woah this is sort of over my head , do you mind simplifying, what was it you did? whats the benefit in interfacing a LM3S8962 with the wii motion plus gyros?
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