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
https://github.com/jdrones/jD-IOBoard
Have a look here as the thread has continued and firmware is now on GitHub
Can't seem to find any info on which values in frsky enabled 9xr receiver (running opentx) are showing which info from mav. Switched from Megapirate to APM and on Megapirate I used "native" frsky output which showed me the sat-count and hdop. Now I remember having put some beta firmware on my jd-io board which was supposed to do just that but forgot about it because I didn't use it for a while. Now I loaded 0.5 firmware and I can't find any info on sat-count, armed state and hdop which used to be there.
Is there any documentation on jd-io board frsky implementation anywhere?
Sorry if this has ben asked before, but
For FrSky telemtery - Is there any reason to connect:
1. IO Board Tx to APM telemetry port. Looks like it does not need to send anything to APM.
3. A6 Pin to FrSky receiver's TX. Does it need to receive anything from receiver?
I tried connecting like this (only four wires):
A5->Receiver's Rx
GND, +5v, Rx -> APM Telemetry port.
And it seem to be working. But I might miss something.
Hi Jani,
I used the FW you recommended and the code is now staying saved. But the various changes in APM modes have no effect on the IO Board output.
Let me see if I even have this right.
The IO Board, on Pin 3 (middle pin) can be programed through the IO Configurator, to flash a certain way based on APM Mode. Is that right? Then why doesn't mine work that way? That's all I want, flashing based on mode. I fly fixed wing and don't need all the lights. However it would be nice to know how to do it. Maybe it would be good to write a detailed how to?
Thanks,
Steven
Ah that.. that was bug in old example software.. it does save but softwares had debug mode on and it erases patterns on every reboot. Try that FrSky software, it's been fixed on that. Our new software engineers are starting on next week so you can expect soon some new updates on both configurator and main software.
Jani,
I connect fine to the IO Board but when I use the Configurator to change the flash pattern and/or change the Flight Mode associated with a certain pattern, it will not save to the IO Board. It looks like it saves and says "done" with no errors but when I read back, it shows the old configurations. I have tried 1.4 and 1.5 FW and no difference. I think I saw at least 2 other posters with this same problem. Appreciate your help.
Steven
Steven can you be a bit more specific about "load and stay". First what software you try to load, how, errors, how to detect it and so on.
Some people have been having problem with bootloader, mostly that has been due old FTDI drivers. IOBoard has same bootloader inside as in normal Arduino Mini Pro board. So first thing if you have problems to connect to board with Arduino IDE is to check and update to latest FTDI drivers. Latest drivers can be download from here.
Jani,
I received new IO Board, output end works now. BUT I can not get the code to load and stay. I see others have had this problem, what is the fix?
Steven
What I am trying to achieve is: A working ioboard that can transmit the data for frsky telemetry.
I have loaded the bootloader successfully through IDE, however I don't know how to compile it correctly, I had no idea that I had to have programming skills to use an ioboard.
I would be very grateful if anyone can help
Thanks -Liam
Jani, I tried to PM you but you have to accept my friend request first. My problem, which I have written to jDrones 3X on, is what I think is an issue with the output of the I/O board. Processor works fine by only one pin of the output gives any power and it is very weak.
Steven
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