Re: Finally some time

[Andrew Stone]

Great!  So do you have it hooked up to an ethernet shield?
WRT the ethernet, does it require the SPI pins (10-13).  For the V4 board, I am freeing those pins from the sink drivers and using them for USB.  Of course, with SPI you can have devices on lines so it should still work with SPI headers.

BTW, In case you missed posting, I did upload a little example video that shows how to move the pins:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJDMpKIAEuk

On Thu, Sep 9, 2010 at 11:54 PM, Scott Penrose <sc...@dd.com.au> wrote:

Got a full hour to myself last night :-)

And I removed the blobs on the Source Driver, connected it across using to the A0 (D14) ... pins, set the regulator to just over 12 volts, and connected my 12 volt relay.

And it all worked !

I used some UTP wire (solid core stuff I had lying around), untwisted of course along the bottom so that it was insulated. It went in nicely and meant that I can still stack the boards either way if necessary.

Thanks

Scott

[Scott Penrose]

Good morning

On 11/09/2010, at 4:46 AM, Andrew Stone wrote:

Great!  So do you have it hooked up to an ethernet shield?

Yes

WRT the ethernet, does it require the SPI pins (10-13).  For the V4 board, I am freeing those pins from the sink drivers and using them for USB.

Good plan. SPI should be kept free for things like that.

  Of course, with SPI you can have devices on lines so it should still work with SPI headers.

However WRT chip has a bug which never releases. But some people have fixed it, e.g. Jon Oxer - http://www.freetronics.com/products/ethernet-shield-with-poe. Some setups also use pin 2 for interrupt, which you use for IR sensor.

0,1 - Serial

2 - IR Sensor or Ethernet shield. If you use a Wifi shield it does use pin 2

3 ?

4,5,6,7 = Sink

8,9,10,11 = Source

So... what is best? Not totally sure, but maybe

0,1 Serial

2 - Spare or Shield

3 - IR sensor (does it have interrupts)

4,5,6,7 = Sink (can you use one as PWM)

8 ?

9 = USB select?

10 = standard used for ethernet shield select

11-13 = SPI

Which still leaves the source driver, although I know it works 14,15,16,17

Always hard. I do like that you just did those little solder pads that took me no more than 15 minutes to organise move and test. While things like my ethernet and wifi shields are not configurable without extreme cutting.

So in what form are you adding USB? Normally USB on Arduino is just converted from the serial port (pin 0,1).

BTW, In case you missed posting, I did upload a little example video that shows how to move the pins:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJDMpKIAEuk

Yes got that, the day after I did it... thehe :-)

It will be boring but I will post a photo.

BTW. If you google Lightuino - the majority of the links lead to the Google code site, which has lots of info on V2 hardware, and none on v3. I think you should create a v3 page there and link it to your private site.

Scooter

[Andrew Stone]

Hi Scott,

On Sun, Sep 12, 2010 at 9:56 PM, Scott Penrose <sc...@dd.com.au> wrote:

Good morning

On 11/09/2010, at 4:46 AM, Andrew Stone wrote:

Great!  So do you have it hooked up to an ethernet shield?

Yes

That's great!
 

WRT the ethernet, does it require the SPI pins (10-13).  For the V4 board, I am freeing those pins from the sink drivers and using them for USB.

Good plan. SPI should be kept free for things like that.

  Of course, with SPI you can have devices on lines so it should still work with SPI headers.

However WRT chip has a bug which never releases. But some people have fixed it, e.g. Jon Oxer - http://www.freetronics.com/products/ethernet-shield-with-poe. Some setups also use pin 2 for interrupt, which you use for IR sensor.

:-(  Yes, when adding complex shields, some functionality may have to be moved, or disabled.   

I like to think of it as the CPU in the Lightuino is really dedicated to driving the LEDs because these CPUs aren't really big enough for multiple jobs.  But if the "other" parts of your sketch are small enough then it is sort of a "bonus" that you can cram them into the Lightuino (instead of connecting an Arduino+shield to the Lightuino using the Wire library). 

So its pretty awesome when something like the ethernet shield actually works!  But of course changing the pins around to work by default with this shield would make something else (motor shield, wave shield, whatever) break by default.

 

0,1 - Serial

2 - IR Sensor or Ethernet shield. If you use a Wifi shield it does use pin 2

3 ?

4,5,6,7 = Sink

8,9,10,11 = Source

So... what is best? Not totally sure, but maybe

0,1 Serial

2 - Spare or Shield

3 - IR sensor (does it have interrupts)

4,5,6,7 = Sink (can you use one as PWM)

8 ?

9 = USB select?

10 = standard used for ethernet shield select

11-13 = SPI

Which still leaves the source driver, although I know it works 14,15,16,17

Always hard. I do like that you just did those little solder pads that took me no more than 15 minutes to organise move and test. While things like my ethernet and wifi shields are not configurable without extreme cutting.

All SPI devices sort of should use 10 by default because when doing SPI, there are restrictions on the use of pin 10... so Lightuino will also use pin 10 and you'll have to remap it.

I'm thinking that the analog inputs are precious :-) So I was considering putting the src driver by default onto 3,8,9.  The last bit is the "enable/disable" line so its actually optional -- by default I was going to force it to ground.

I could actually do the same for the sink driver's overall brightness.  In 50 V3 boards it looks like Charlie is the only guy who used it...

And of course you will always be able to map it to a pin by changing the solder jumpers.

 

So in what form are you adding USB? Normally USB on Arduino is just converted from the serial port (pin 0,1).

I'm adding a Cypress USB CPU (CY7C64316) onto the board with my own firmware.  The advantages are:

1.  This will actually free up the UART and pins 0,1 for general use.  So it "sort of" uses fewer pins because the SPI only needs 1 dedicated pin.
2.  It kind of offended me that the USB to UART actually costs MORE than the CPU (and uses more board space)!  This solution hits your $3 price point, and is about the size of my pinky fingernail.
3.  No AVR bootloader, but it will look like there is one to the Arduino IDE.  The Cypress chip will directly write the AVR via ICSP.  This has several advantages:
   a) Your sketch can fill the full 32k
   b) Your sketch starts right away
   c) Certain failure modes we always read about in arduino.cc (where the bootloader gets corrupted) are eliminated
   d) I think it will upload the sketch a little faster.
4.  You guys will not NEED to write code for this chip, BUT with a few of qualifications, you could actually hack it as well!
5. Get out-of-jail-free.  You can always use this to write an arduino bootloader into the Lightuino V4, then connect up the serial to an FTDI cable and use the board the "traditional" way.


Disadvantages:
1.  I have to write code to do this on the Cypress CPU.  But its almost done :-)
2.  Serial.print() will still go out the UART.   To talk out the USB to your computer, you'll have to do something nonstandard like Usb.print().
3.  Uses the SPI, which "sort of" needs 4 pins (1 dedicated, 3 multi-use).
4.  ?? Its a new thing so who knows what issues might crop up!


The qualifications for you guys writing code for the Cypress CPU are:
   a) Need a programmer ($20)
   b) Have to use Cypress's Windows-only GUI dev tool :-(
   c) Have to write code for the torturous M8C CPU. :-)

It will be boring but I will post a photo.

BTW. If you google Lightuino - the majority of the links lead to the Google code site, which has lots of info on V2 hardware, and none on v3. I think you should create a v3 page there and link it to your private site.

Thanks, that entire private site was done in about 2 hours and needs a facelift.  So I've been kind of hiding it. :-(  But I'll fix the google code wiki to point there.

Cheers,
Andrew