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Post by donburch on Mar 18, 2007 13:42:23 GMT 10
Have any of you had experience with Brainstem, or other opinions on it ? "Acroname BrainStem General Purpose Module (GP 1.0) is supported on Windows, WinCE, MacOS X, PalmOS and Linux. The GP 1.0 Module pairs BrainStem software with hardware to provide you with an ideal, user-friendly microcontroller environment. With convenient power and ground connections for each I/O pin, ten analog and digital I/O lines, a Sharp GP2D02 driver, high-resolution servo outputs, and an IIC bus, the module offers "plug & play" ease for connecting most accessories. Modules can operate as a serial slave device, run concurrent TEA programs, and handle reflexive actions automatically. Best of all, these can all happen simultaneously. All BrainStem modules can be stacked with other BrainStem modules, as well as third-party peripherals, along a 1MBit industry standard IIC bus. " |
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Post by Dingo on Mar 18, 2007 21:06:56 GMT 10
Looks interesting. My two big questions are: What microcontroller is it using and what are the "TEA" programs? (I now see a pic in one of the photos) Also I wonder if you get locked into using their other modules or whether there is enough documentation about it for general use. At USD$81 I wonder if another more general purpose board like sold at www.olimex.com or www.futurlec.com wouldn't be more flexible. Apart from those concerns it does look like a good board, especially if you intend to use it the way they intend you to. |
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horar
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Post by horar on Mar 20, 2007 6:49:17 GMT 10
It looks like it is designed to be an alternative to STAMPs, OOPICs or even gumstix and as such, the actual type of the processor doesn't matter. In fact, they seem to avoid mentioning what kind of processor it has beyond "40MHz RISC processor". It also relies on a proprietary simple real-time operating system and language (TEA which is a subset of C according to the tech notes). There are libraries for most commonly used languages for interacting with it from a host computer, which could be a single board computer like they have in their Garcia robot, or a laptop. It would probably be very easy to use, but not very flexible by itself.
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Post by Robotman on Mar 20, 2007 12:10:28 GMT 10
You're trying to cheat Don!!!! You must learn assembler and become one of the initiated!!! You must build your own PIC programmer!!! You must buy a screwdriver!!!  And you must buy Myke Predko's book "Programming and Customizing PICmicro® Microcontrollers". ISBN 0071361723 Okay, the book's got a lot of errors but most of it is right - you just need to know some basic electronics first! It got me started on the PIC, and I still refer to it for things like interfacing to the PC (that's PC without an 'i') - the book really covers a lot more stuff that just the PICs. I recommend building the El-Cheapo from the website, not the one in the book - I did, and it has worked great for all of my PIC projects except for programming the PIC12F509A which the programmer software keeps bombing out on.  I think I've used all of the smilies now |
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Post by Robotman on Mar 23, 2007 10:46:41 GMT 10
Erm. Sorry Don. I wasn't trying to pick on you. Shoot! I feel guilty.
You know how you're interested in the machine vision stuff, well how about getting yourself a video grabber card for your PC (make sure can accept RCA type inputs) and this cheap and cheerful cmos video camera from Jaycar (www.jaycar.com.au, CAT. NO. QC3491, $49.95) - you will also need a 9V ~ 12V DC plugpack supply. The camera has an RCA video out plug and you can download and use that software that does the robot vision stuff you wrote about in another post. This will look more electronic than direct feeding your video camera in and justify the expense to your wife!
Then buy one of those servo controller boards that use the PC's parallel port and a servo motor (Jaycar, CAT. NO. YM2760, $24.95) with your cmos camera mounted to the servo and now you have panning. Add another servo to get tilting. Hopefully you can then integrate the vision software with the servo control software and that's a heck of a good start to robot vision.
But as I wrote in a post I deleted, it will cost money because this is your hobby, but you just gotta do it...!
Cheers
Botman
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Post by donburch on Mar 25, 2007 8:49:08 GMT 10
You're trying to cheat Don!!!! You must learn assembler and become one of the initiated!!! Does Digital PDP-8 Assember count ? Mind you that was back in '75 while I was at High School in NZ ... Then some Motorolla 6800 Assembler in a night class (as a diversion from commercial applications programming during the day). And I did write one "program" for Zilog Z80 running CP/M ... The TRS-80 Mark II would scroll the screen up OK, but I wanted to scroll part of the screen down as well - turned out to be a memory-mapped screen, so only took 4 instrunctions and 3 of those were loading the registers ! Since then I've found that high level languages achieve far more for the same amount of effort, especially when using existing libraries ... I accept that controlling servos etc. is best done at low level, but somewhere between there and machine vision there must be a change of toolset. And coming from a software background, I feel more confident using a higher-level language. This Stamp BASIC is soooo old-fashioned ! Already got several ... Flat or Philips ? What size ? I may be wrong here, but doesn't this kinda assume using PIC controllers ? Surely not !  |
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Post by donburch on Mar 25, 2007 16:25:55 GMT 10
Thanks guys, you have (indirectly) answered my question ... that you haven't had first-hand experience with BrainStem. Thanks also for your impressions ... like you, I think it sounds interesting, especially the idea of creating "configurable reflexive behaviors" for lower-level tasks. I get the impression that BrainStem isn't desighed for high-level tasks (like machine vision), though I suspect it would also be good for mid-level jobs due to its C and Java programming. Erm. Sorry Don. I wasn't trying to pick on you. Shoot! I feel guilty. No reason to feel guilty, I took it in fun ! Mind you I've been rather stressed at work lately and depressed, so maybe my reply sounds more serious than I intended. As always, you're right on target, Botman ! I have been intending to use RoboRealm, if only to work out which techniques to use in the 'bot. However you make it sound very cheap to get vision working on the PC (even just as a demo). My ideal would be if Evolution would still sell ER1 for US$299 ... but now the price is $25000 (for ERSP softwasre, with a ER1 thrown in as a free extra). A laptop shoild be plenty powerful, high level programmable, and a reasonable weight and size to build into a robot. All it needs is a sturdy lightweight base with a couple of motors and ability to add USB camera and a few sensors by USB or serial. But even without ER1 base, a pan/tilt camera would be a good addition to a PC to get familiar with the hardware and software. If only it were that simple  |
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Post by Robotman on Mar 26, 2007 10:50:40 GMT 10
Thank you Don, I really thought my little humour had gone awry.  Surely! I did miss the kiss! And thanks for taking it like a man ;D    And that's gotta be an end to this silliness on my part P.S. My mentioning that Predko book wasn't an advertisement - I thought you were using PICs. But still, it's a good read for lots of other info you might want and I haven't found a book that brings it all together in one place. I have lots of "home made books" downloaded from info scrounged across the 'Net but I've not seen anything on the shelfs of bookstores that put it all in one place. So, let me guess - you're not actually worried about which controller/processor that you end up using, you just want the tools (and I suppose easy-to-interface-to I/O hardware) to get your high-level vision processing done? |
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