Our ArduStation MEGA boards arrived today and I am truly excited to see how they work. Now starts small assembly job for them and then we can start doing testing for those.
Big thanks for Colin for his original ASM work, it's great to see what great minds can create.
New boards looks just awesome. Few connectors are missing but those are quickly soldered. These boards are from the first batch and we have them now small qty in stock. If there are any changes that needs to be made, we will do it and then first production batch will come.
Technical specs:
- MCU: Atmel 2560 with Atmel 8u2 USB "adapter"
- XBee footprint for telemetry with external pins
- IO: Buzzer, Analog, I2C, GPS
- SDCard holder for storage needs
- 128 x 64 pixel Graphics LCD
- 3 x TTL Serial output pins
- 2 x Servo outputs with internal/external power feed
- Encoder port for menus etc use
- Connection for I2C Keyboard
- 4 x LEDs for showing different statues
Jani / jDrones
Comments
@Paul and other ASM users,
Yes, be very careful when connecting and disconnecting the I2C cables.The board connectors are very delicate and can be broke off the board if you are not careful. I always try to push on the back side of the connector when inserting a cable connector as it helps to reduce the foward force loading on the board connector during the insertion process.
TCIII
Duuh...updated drivers and now see ASM fine, I was working on a fresh Windows 7 and didn't have the Arduino IDE installed (which has the correct usb drivers).
While re-connecting keyboard I managed to rip off the IC2 connector - bugger!
Cheers, Paul
@Harry, get on to Jani/Jdrones as Tom suggests, your order must have been lost - I ordered mine last week and got it this week with free shipping to UK which as much quicker than expected.
I'm having mixed results in the early stages:
- got an encoder wired in - I used this one as I had it about ( this is a 12 step encoder, I think any one will work as long as it outputs gray codes), I also connected the push button up to the middle button on the keyboard - this works great, will be good for tuning parameters.
- I can't get the firmware updated via Mission Planner, it doesn't seem to create a port to connect to and I get a 'Communication Error - no connection'. If I connect the APM up I get COM 3 or similar but nothing with ASM. I'm using MP on a Mac through Vmware - I'll keep trying or build from Arduino.
Cheers, Paul
@Harry,
Shoot Jani a pm and tell him that you and I both want him to get with the program and get your order shipped!! Seriously!!
Regards,
TCIII
Love to join in and be in the process of configuring mine but jdrones have been sitting on my order and money for nearly three months now.... they have been showing them as in stock for weeks and my order which was placed in Feb when they were on back order has now been sitting in a state of processing since they came back into stock weeks ago.
@Paul,
I used my ground side 3DR 915MHz transceiver to program a second air side transceiver. I then attached the air side transceiver to the ASM telemetry I/O connector and received Mavlink data from the air side transceiver on my ArduRover rover. It works.
Regards,
TCIII
Glad your encoder hooked up okay Tom. They're nice those ones. I'm thinking about wiring up the push button on it to the middle button on my button board later down the line. Makes sense that you can then push it as the enter button.
Unfortunately I haven't had any coding time this week. Hoping to get some next week. I'll be looking to add the parameter page and start putting a small wiki page on hacking the key parts of the code. There's plenty of scope for people to add in custom pages and have users select the ones they like the most.
Sorry to hear about the xbee socket, Paul. I think that was a last minute change. I hope you get up and running soon
Mine arrived today, thanks Colin & Jani - looks good.
The board is marked v1.4, the capacitor on the power board is the right way around. Boots up with 'jDrones ASM v1.1' firmware.
One got ya so far - there is no xbee socket (there is on the picture on the JDrones site and on the old ardustation) so I'm short of a socket to get it up and running - I've ordered an Xbee Explorer Regulated which should work.
Thinking about the radio link, if your using 3DR radio you'll need 2 airside radios (rather than an airside and a ground side), I think you'll also need a FTDI to USB cable to set up the radios unless you have a spare groundside radio to connect to your computer.
Does anyone know what the 5 pads are on the button board - is there a schematic (the board silk screen has 'guides at jdrones.com/jDoc' but I get 404 not found).
I'll let know know how I get on when I get the radios linked up.
Cheers, Paul
Hi All,
Received the Bourns PEC11 encoder from Adafruit Industries and after building an appropriate three wire cable, attached it to the ASM and checked it for functionality. Works great. Now all I have to do is finish making the cutouts in my Preserver 3000 case and install the ASM and accompany components.
@Colin,
Any chance of updating the ASM code for the ArduRover parameters this week?
Regards,
TCIII
Tom,
Here's a video of me compiling ASM from scratch with a fresh install of arduino.
http://youtu.be/zTI-XEjL3Xs
Hope it helps.
Also, I have a parameter page that I haven't ported to this version yet:
Could be useful for a long list of parameters. Will prob do that next week.
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