jDrones News: jD-IOBoard v1.0 update
You had some problems on driving LED strips or something else?? Well no problems anymore.... We have seen people making all type of darlington/transistor and similar hacks to drive their LEDs, Sirens and so on but they all need a lot of hacking and they might not be suitable for long term solution.
We answered on this call and made fully Arduino compatible called jD-IOBoard that can run Single LEDs, LED Strips, Loudspeakers, Buzzers, Power switches and so on. It's upto your own imagination on what all you can control with this board.
So what does this board actually do?? It has fully Arduino compatible ATMEGA 328 MCU and Darlington array to driver high power outputs. Also I2C pins are exposed and same as many TTL level IO and Analog pins. As you can see from picture above.
Board has:
- 6 x High power outputs, max. 500mAh / 50 Volts
- 4 x Analog inputs (6 if you don't use I2C port)
- I2C port for controlling, listening I2C messages
- 6 x TTL level GPIO pins (8 if you don't use FTDI)
- 1 x FTDI port
3 high power outputs can also be controlled by PWM output while another 3 are just normal "On/Off" outputs
How those Arduino pinouts looks like:
Connecting LED's,Buzzers etc is really simple. Just use one of output pins on end of the board. Below you can see examples on how to connect LEDs or LED Strips on it.
Pictures does not give enough credit for how it works so we made small video to show just few examples on how to use it. There are many other ways to do it but this should give at least some idea what/how to run it. So have fun watching it.
Get yours from jDrones Store: jD-IOBoard and have a blink blink.
Ps. There are some nice features coming to this board shortly...
Comments
We just got PCBs for them and now we are assembling those. They will be added to jDrones store shortly.
Telemetry Distribution will have:
- 2 x DF15 - 5 Pin connectors for IN and OUT
- 3 x 4 pin header for OSD, IOBoard etc connectivity
- 1 x jumper to separate Rx pins when running both OSD/IOBoard and Telemetry modems
- 1 x DF13 5 Pin cable
How to connect it, connect DF13-5Pin from APM2.5/Telemetry port to Distribution board IN port and connect cable from Telemetry port to Distribution board OUT port. Eg. board goes between Telemetry modems and APM2.5 Telemetry port.
@ mohd fitri - so how did you manage it ? I have tried to rescue the 328 following the jDrones advice but no luck whatsoever.
jDrones promised to 'get back to me' last week but (guess what) I'm still waiting - no change there then. Thanks Jani.
@ mohd fitri - I wish you luck, I , with many others, have been trying to get an answer from jDrones on this issue, for nearly 3 months in my case.
I too have tried to burn the bootloader via AVR Studio and also by following the offered tips re using an Arduino - it doesn't work.
Clearly jDrones have had this problem since the outset - problem first raised on this forum in August last year - yet they continue to sell it without any further advice on its use.
I've had better customer service from HobbyKing !!
To be more precise.
- Go on Arduino IDE and open Example Sketch called ArduinoISP.
- Connect cables as said earlier
- From Tools menu choose Programmer / Arduino as ISP
- From Tools/Board menu check that you have Arduino Pro or Mini Pro 5V/16Mhz selected
After that from Tools menu click Burn Bootloader. If cables are connected correct way it will start burning process. Process takes 10-15 seconds or so. Most common mistake is to put MISO/MOSI cables upside down so if that is the case, just swap them and try again.
There are more instruction on ArduinoISP programming sketch and also Arduino.cc website.
If your bootloader is corrupted, board is normal Arduino board and if you don't have real ISP programmer at hand you can always use another Arduino board to burn bootloader. Just connect their ISP pins together. You need to connect MISO, MOSI, CLOCK, RESET, GND and +5 between boards and then use Arduino IDE to burn bootloader.
Ravi, sorry to hear your problems but there are big red warnings all around the documentation images not to connect high power to 5V area. As we tried to keep it's production price as low as possible and also physical size, it does not have regulator like we have on MiniOSD and because of this current design needs both +12v and +5v to work properly. Next revision will at least have better high voltage input with cable.
MAVLink / Flying mode and flashed pattern you can change with IOBoard Configurator. Both Configurator and MAVLink software are still on their beta stage, new features will be coming on those. Also they are full opensoftware so anyone are free to modify those.
But sure all ideas and proposals are welcome.
jani, i have bad experince with ur LED board. the board does not works when you power the digital side via APM and the LED driver side bia the 12 V battery. the only way to make it work is make a common ground for analog and digittal sides. since the connectors do not have polarity protection i gave +12V to ground of analog side by error and my brand new APM2.5+ fried instantly. you should come up with a better product and with better documentaion. the LED blinking seqencee has no documentaion to show what parameter of mavlink is being indiacted by LED patterns. i hope to see the version has a failsafe od protecting the APM.
Josh did you look IOBoard FrSky software there?? as in FrSky software there is full MAVLink stack included and it looks all hartbeats etc. Another that you can look is our MiniOSD software that me and Sandro wrote earlier. Now Gabor and others are continuing that software.
Josh, there are 3 pwm outputs and 3 just normal IO outputs on jD-IOBoard. If you look codes at arducodes repository those pins are marked on there.
Same goes for MAVLink messages. There is already software that reads MAVLink commands as we use those on MAVLink beta software for IOBoard. That software is also on arducodes repository.
1) Its possible to use standard Arduino outputs for PWM. However the PWM needs to be controlled in software. Search Google or have a look at www.arduino.cc and look for a Software PWM library.
3) The 6 "high power" outputs are still standard Arduino 5v outputs, but go through a ULN2003A high current Darlington array. Although surface mount on the IO board, they are available as a standard DIP package allowing you to breadboard this chip for additional high current outputs.
Hope that helps a little.
Steve
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