Author Topic: need help putting together a microcontroller  (Read 1520 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline morgmorgTopic starter

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • Posts: 11
  • Helpful? 0
need help putting together a microcontroller
« on: April 15, 2012, 11:32:45 PM »
i am a beginner to microcontrollers and robots. I looked at the tutorial for the 50 dollar robot but a few of the steps were a little hard could someone either post a tutorial video or tell me where to find one for building the microcontroller. 

Offline jkerns

  • Robot Overlord
  • ****
  • Posts: 270
  • Helpful? 12
Re: need help putting together a microcontroller
« Reply #1 on: April 16, 2012, 06:44:26 AM »
Which parts, specifically, are you having trouble with?

I would suggest reading the data sheet for the micro controller chip - that will give you the details about what each pin does and might answer a lot of your questions.
I get paid to play with robots - can't beat that with a stick.

http://www.ltu.edu/engineering/mechanical/bachelor-science-robotics-engineering.asp

Offline mstacho

  • Supreme Robot
  • *****
  • Posts: 376
  • Helpful? 10
Re: need help putting together a microcontroller
« Reply #2 on: April 16, 2012, 07:23:18 AM »
If you're using any of the ATMega chips, these guys have great simple board schematics to play with: http://avrprogrammers.com/atmega644bd.php (that one is for the 644, but there are other board schematics for the other ATMegas)
Current project: tactile sensing systems for multifingered robot hands

Offline morgmorgTopic starter

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • Posts: 11
  • Helpful? 0
Re: need help putting together a microcontroller
« Reply #3 on: April 16, 2012, 04:45:44 PM »
improbably going to buy a majority of the components from radio shack and i was wondering what type of ic i should get

Offline mstacho

  • Supreme Robot
  • *****
  • Posts: 376
  • Helpful? 10
Re: need help putting together a microcontroller
« Reply #4 on: April 17, 2012, 08:22:00 AM »
You mean which microcontroller to get?  That is...a deeply personal choice :-P  What you'll end up finding is that PICs, Atmel chips, Arduinos (based on Atmel...) etc all do just about the same thing, but they are programmed slightly differently and have different user communities.

I like Atmel chips, especially because great libraries already exist for them (Arduino and webbotlib), plus the user community here is awesome.  But at the same time, I learned on Atmel chips, so...maybe I'm a bit biased.

To start with, if you're going Atmel, the ATMega328 is a good one, as is the ATMega644.  Both have the same capabilities in terms of computation, but the 644 comes in a bigger package with more IO and more memory (64K compared to 32K).  If you're using webbot to program them, the code is essentially the same, although the pinouts are different.

Interestingly, the setup circuits are almost identical as well (except for pinout, which changes).  I've played with both, I like them.
Current project: tactile sensing systems for multifingered robot hands

Offline morgmorgTopic starter

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • Posts: 11
  • Helpful? 0
Re: need help putting together a microcontroller
« Reply #5 on: April 17, 2012, 06:18:33 PM »
i was wondering if someone could look at this ic and tell me if its any good and where to put the pins? http://www.nteinc.com/specs/6800to6899/pdf/nte6850.pdf

Offline mstacho

  • Supreme Robot
  • *****
  • Posts: 376
  • Helpful? 10
Re: need help putting together a microcontroller
« Reply #6 on: April 17, 2012, 07:24:03 PM »
It depends on what you're doing with it.  If you need asynchronous communications drivers to whatever a "NTE6800 Microprocessing Unit" is, then it appears to be fine?  If you're trying to do something else, it isn't :-P  You need to ask specific questions. 
Current project: tactile sensing systems for multifingered robot hands

Offline Soeren

  • Supreme Robot
  • *****
  • Posts: 4,672
  • Helpful? 227
  • Mind Reading: 0.0
Re: need help putting together a microcontroller
« Reply #7 on: April 19, 2012, 05:28:15 PM »
Hi,

i was wondering if someone could look at this ic and tell me if its any good and where to put the pins? http://www.nteinc.com/specs/6800to6899/pdf/nte6850.pdf
It's a UART chip and unless you go the Old-Skool way using external EPROM for the program and each peripheral, you have absolutely no use for it.

Another thing is that NTE (AFAIK) only makes knock off copies, which is good if you need something that went out of production, but they don't document their products as well, so you really need the datasheet for the original to use fully.

Stop hunting for chips until you have a clear plan of what you want to accomplish, or you'll soon have spent a load of money on something that you can't use anyway.
Regards,
Søren

A rather fast and fairly heavy robot with quite large wheels needs what? A lot of power?
Please remember...
Engineering is based on numbers - not adjectives

 


Get Your Ad Here

data_list