Monthly Archives: February 2016

Fez Cobra III Analog Input read rates

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In other blog posts I have measured the AnalogInput read rate of my Netduino, FEZ Lemur and FEZ Panda III devices and was surprised by some of the numbers. Now, I have another project which uses a GHI Electronics FEZ Covbra III so have done another quick test.

This is just a simple test, not terribly representative of real world I just wanted to get comparable numbers.

public static void Main()
{
   int value;
   AnalogInput x1 = new AnalogInput(FEZLemur.AnalogInput.D19);
   Stopwatch stopwatch = Stopwatch.StartNew();

   Debug.Print("Starting");

   stopwatch.Start();
   for (int i = 0; i <; SampleCount; i++)
   {
      value = x1.ReadRaw();
   }
   stopwatch.Stop();

   Debug.Print("Duration = " + stopwatch.ElapsedMilliseconds.ToString() + " mSec " + (SampleCount * 1000 / stopwatch.ElapsedMilliseconds).ToString() + "/sec";);
}

Fez CobraIII 120 MHz CPU
Duration = 9297 mSec 10756/sec
Duration = 9297 mSec 10756/sec
Duration = 9298 mSec 10755/sec
Duration = 9296 mSec 10757/sec
Duration = 9298 mSec 10755/sec

Something is not quite right here need to look at my code and the numbers some more.

Mikrobus.Net Quail Robot

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In a previous post I had replaced a Netduino and Elecfreaks Joystick shield based remote control with a MikrobusNet Quail, thumbstick click and an nRF-C click. The next step was to replace the Netduino on the robot chassis with a MikrobusNet Quail, a pair of DC Motor Clicks and an nRF-C click.

Bill of materials (prices in USD as at Feb 2016)

The first version of the robot uses a pair of battery packs one for the motors the other for the Quail board.

MikrobusNetQual4WDRobot

The drivers developed by MikroBUSNet team greatly reduced the amount of code I had to write to get the robot to work.

public class Program
{
   private static double Scale = 100.0;
   private static byte RobotControlChannel = 10;
   private static byte[] ControllerAddress = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes("RC1");
   private static byte[] RobotAddress = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes("RB1");
   private static TimeSpan MessageMaximumInterval = new TimeSpan(0, 0, 1);
   private static DateTime _MessageLastReceivedAt = DateTime.UtcNow;
   private static DCMotorClick motor1 = new DCMotorClick(Hardware.SocketOne);
   private static DCMotorClick motor2 = new DCMotorClick(Hardware.SocketTwo);

public static void Main()
{
   NRFC nrf = new NRFC(Hardware.SocketFour);
   nrf.Configure(RobotAddress, RobotControlChannel);
   nrf.OnTransmitFailed += nrf_OnTransmitFailed;
   nrf.OnTransmitSuccess += nrf_OnTransmitSuccess;
   nrf.OnDataReceived += nrf_OnDataReceived;
   nrf.Enable();

   Timer CommunicationsMonitorTimer = new Timer(CommunicationsMonitorTimerProc, null, 500, 500);

   Thread.Sleep(Timeout.Infinite);
}

static void nrf_OnDataReceived(byte[] data)
{
   Hardware.Led1.Write(true);
   _MessageLastReceivedAt = DateTime.UtcNow;

   if (data.Length != 5)
   {
   return;
   }

   Debug.Print("M1D=" + data[0].ToString() + " M2D=" + data[1].ToString() + " M1S=" + data[2].ToString() + " M2S=" + data[3].ToString());
   if (data[0] == 1)
   {
      motor1.Move(DCMotorClick.Directions.Forward, (data[2] / Scale ));
   }
   else
   {
     motor1.Move(DCMotorClick.Directions.Backward, (data[2] / Scale ));
   }

   if (data[1] == 1)
   {
      motor2.Move(DCMotorClick.Directions.Forward, (data[3] / Scale ));
   }
   else
   {
      motor2.Move(DCMotorClick.Directions.Backward, (data[3] / Scale ));
   }
}

private static void CommunicationsMonitorTimerProc(object status)
{
   if ((DateTime.UtcNow - _MessageLastReceivedAt) > MessageMaximumInterval)
   {
      Debug.Print("Communications timeout");

      motor1.Move(MBN.Modules.DCMotorClick.Directions.Forward, 0.0);
      motor2.Move(MBN.Modules.DCMotorClick.Directions.Forward, 0.0);
   }
}

I have kept the communications monitoring functionality which stops the motors when the robot gets out of range of the remote control software fails.