Major New Hexapod Software Update Beta Test

[vorpalrobotics]

Hello all,

I've posted a major new beta test version of the hexapod and gamepad code to:

    http://tinyurl.com/VORPALFILES

The new code is in the folder BETA_TEST_V3r0. You must flash both the robot and gamepad to get all the new features.

This is a major update with many, many cool new features. I've run this at a couple of maker faires so it seems stable, and there are currently no known issues, but your mileage may vary.

Feel free to post feedback to this thread, or send them directly to me via email to: support AT vorpalrobotics.com

New feature list:

1) Double Click Mode. The W, D, and F rows of the gamepad can now be double clicked to access new functions. The robot will issue a high pitched beep if you've successfully double clicked. The

two clicks need to happen within a half second of each other. New leg motions:

W1W1: Wave Gait (one leg at a time walking)

W2W2: Belly Crawl gait. Robot goes down on belly and basically uses the legs like "oars" to row along the surface. Used to get under low overhangs.

W3W3: Quadruped gait (uses four legs and sways middle legs)

W4W4: Changes direction by redefining where the front of the robot is. F dpad button does the same as usual. L moves as if the front of the robot is between leg

      0 and leg 1. R moves as if the front of the robot is between legs 5 and 4. B reverses the sense of the front of the robot. This allows you to "turn" without actually rotating the robot's

       body. The L and R dpad buttons almost cause the robot to sidestep (in actuality they cause a 60 degree change in direction, not 90 degrees as a true sidestep).

D1D1: Twitch dancing. All legs go out to the sides and various dpad buttons cause different twitching motions.

D2D2: Sway dancing. Similar to D1D1 in initial stance, but much different in terms of leg motion patterns.

D3D3: Star dancing (star patterns with legs). My favorite is using dpad button S (special, the one up top over the directional buttons) which sort of does a "cossack" dance.

D4D4: Brownian motion dancing (sort of like "the worm" from Animal House) Different dpad buttons cause different combinations of legs to move randomly via brownian motion.

F1F1: Dog mode. Does various tricks: "beg for food", wave goodbye, queen's wave, wave with both hands.

F2F2: The dpad controls just leg 5, allowing it move up, down, left, or right.

F3F3: The dpad controls just leg 0, like F2F2.

F4F4: Raise/lower the robot with and without spiral motions.

2) Leg safety mode. The robot will now briefly put all six legs on the ground when switching between most modes. This avoids motor stresses that occur, for example, when

   going from "Mr. Hands Mode" (D4) to Ninja Mode (F1). Modes that retain leg position state (such as F3, F4, F3F3, etc.) do not reset to all six legs standing, allowing you to stack

   up state-holding sequences. For example you could use F2F2 to move just leg 5 to a new position, then click F3F3 to move just leg 0, and your leg 5 moves will not be

   affected by the mode change.

3) Smoother motions for F3, F4, F2F2, F3F3, and other state-holding modes. The motions used to be fairly jerky but now each time slice while waiting for new

   gamepad packets interpolates where the leg is moving toward, resulting in much smoother looking motions.

4) "Terse mode" radio control protocol allows access to all double click functions. Double clicks on W can be accessed using X, D using Y and F using Z. This is mainly

   used by people who are creating alternative gamepads or gamepad apps, or want to control the robot using an off the shelf gamepad that supports bluetooth and has

   definable sequences for different button pushes.

5) There is now a master timing control #define near the start that makes the leg motions move at appropriate speeds for different sized hexapods (i.e. megapod and

   gigapod). While the megapod worked reasonably well under the same timing as the small version of the robot and on a tiny difference is there, the gigapod

   needed significant different timing.

LIMITATIONS

The new double click leg motions are not available to the ScratchX interface yet. We are doing a major overhaul of our Scratch code to support Scratch 3.0 right now.

Enjoy!

-Steve P.