Considering a baby orangutan board

[izua]

Hey! I'm considering a baby orangutan from pololu. It has a powerful mega48 and two hbridges in a very compact form. And it's not so expensive, either, considering the tiny size. Anyway
I want to know if anyone has experience with these. they're just an atmega with a driver and a regulator sticked to a board, right? i still get to use the language of my choice.
About their programming protocol, I understand it's 6pin ISP - and works with any programmer (even parallel port). I mean, if my programmer can program a mega48 in the breadboard, it can on the board, right?
Last thing, I'm not able to figure out the difference between this board and this one. They have the same chip, almost the same layout and capabilities. Is it the colour?

edit: oh, and one more thing. is the atmega48 susceptible to fuse lock?

[Admin]

I haven't used it myself, but the user Brijesh has been very vocal about how annoying the motor drivers are set up.

My personal opinion is that although it may be small, because it doesn't have a power bus you'd still need to do external wiring, potentially doubling the size.

Last thing, I'm not able to figure out the difference between this board and this one. They have the same chip, almost the same layout and capabilities. Is it the colour?

The layouts are different, the parts on it are different, and the number of parts and orientation are also different. The part # is also different. I'm sure if you browse the documentation for awhile they will mention whats up with that . . .

edit: oh, and one more thing. is the atmega48 susceptible to fuse lock?

all AVR's are - don't touch the fuses if you don't know what you are doing, and you will be fine

[Steve Joblin]

I haven't had any direct experience with the oranguan board, but I have had lots of great experience with other Pololu products.. Based on my experience with them, I have nothing but accolades for their products, design, quality, documentation, and support... just buy it and I am sure you will be satisfied!

[brijesh]

The Blue one is their new version. It has a different H-bridge chip. This new version of the board does not have the kind of problems I mentioned about driving the H-bridge chip. Also older board is a problem only if you are doing fancy things like trying to run motors at a very high PWM frequency( > 20KHz) and using high resolution encoders etc. Otherwise old board is fine.

If you need to control 2 DC motors then this is one of best boards out there. I have not come across any other AVR boards that have built in H-Bridge and are in this price range.

If you are not planning on using it to control DC motors then other boards maybe better options. Because 4 pins are used to drive the H-bridge and are not brought out. So for other applications you will not be able to use those 4 pins.

The board uses the standard ISP pinout for programming. I have used STK500 and AVR MKII to program it. They have published the schematic and you can check the pin out of the pins coming to programing port.

In summary, its a good board to drive 2 small DC motors along with sensors and encoders.
 

[izua]

Hey!
No, i'm just driving driving this kit, i think low power is the word.
The old board is at almost half price, since its being discontinued. The motors from this kit suck at most .66 Amps each.

[brijesh]

For that kit, either old or new board will be fine.

brijesh