Popełniłam tekst o naszym nowym “mózgu”. To trochę pomocniczy materiał dla ludzi, którzy używają VESC lub innych ESC. Ciąg dalszy nastąpi.
The advantages of exploring possibilities. VESC and Faraday Motion Brain.
Innovation can be a risky business, we know it. But failure to embrace risk can mean extinction. So how do you prove that the risk is worth it, and when to go “all in” for innovation?
At Faraday Motion we believe that it can be done it in few ways:
– By sharing risk through open collaboration between partners and creators, bringing
together diverse capabilities, ideas and experience.
– By establishing win-win cooperation and work for mutual success.
– Through prototyping and testing within the community & makerspace.
– By focusing on core strength and needs. They are key for making an impact.
Our basic plan is to create the ultimate modular and customizable electric skateboard-kit, enabled by 3D printing technology. We create technology that accelerate the growth of user friendly, intuitive and beautiful personal electric vehicles, thereby improving lives of people.
That’s why we made The Brain.
What we are doing differently than e-skateboard companies:
Are you interested in additional sensors, input and outputs? The sensors could be accelerometer/gyro (balance), collision avoidance (infrared/ultrasonic), mobile phone integration (bluetooth/WiFi), hand controller (joystick), or it could be something completely different.
VESC is just a ‘hub’ that takes all the information and telling the motors what to do. So it’s very much like our own brain here.
The unit here already has its small brain but it’s limited with its individual functionality. Basically, if we here would use our arm as an example: The arm would be able to move, but it would not know how to do that without the coordination from our eyes and other senses.
What makes the difference is our idea of a Brain. Idea to not lock ourselves into VESC. If somebody wants, they can use our brain with other parts. For example, for use with simpler style of motor controllers (Hobby ESC) instead of the VESC. We are able to do this, because the Brain generates both PWM-signal (Pulse width modulation) which is traditionally used on Hobby ESC’s. Alongside, serial (UART) signals, used for the VESC and other advanced motor controllers, are generated.
What you would typically do is send some commands (speed, acceleration) to the motor controller. You just need to have the same protocol (language) in order to communicate properly.
Normally, to use another motor controller we would have to adjust the software protocol to make it ‘talk’ together. When we have the motor controller and documentation in hand, we would make the implementation in the software (in the brain). Then, we would be able to control it just like we do with the VESC.
If there is a better product tomorrow, (better than VESC, cheaper etc.) We can modify the software, adjust settings for motor controller and then we can drive right away and have all this stuff as mentioned before.
So the brain can control old style VESC or any other ESC. The benefit here is that we are able to reach a huge community which is already existing (even though they are not using our brain, our components and even our boards) not enough with that, we will take it one step further. We will make it easy for the people who are not programmers, who might still be interested in using other people’s apps or even to customize their own stuff. But this is the second stage of our plan.
This is not where we are now, guys.
Because Faraday Motion is not a hardware company, how we did this, how we came out with The Brain is that we took some projects which are already out there on the internet popular on forums and maker websites and tried to make use of them in our work.
We have been using the cheap ESP8266 WiFi-module for some time for the Spines we have shipped already (for the customers accepting experimental stuff).
Our Requirements for The Brain are listed below:
Programmable with Arduino
OTA/ Webupdates support
Plenty of program space available for new functions
Fast and reliable WiFi-network
Fast boot (that’s why we don’t like the Arduino Yun and Linkit Smart 7866 so much)
Extendable (I2C or serial communication (UART) with other microcontrollers)
Features we would like to implement in The Brain:
VESC Serial Motor-controller control
Teensy communication (I2C, 2x digital IO)
Nunchuck-controller (I2C, 2x digital IO)
Software dead man switch (digital input)
Current sensing (Analog input)
Servo motorcontroller control (digital output)
Servo brake 1 (digital output)
Servo brake 2 (digital output)
Neopixels (control, rear, back) (1 digital output)
Hardware reset EXTERNAL (digital output)
Hardware reset NODEMCU
Controller PWM (digital input)
Switch 1
Switch 2 (USB CHARGER)
So here you go: ESP8266 WiFi-module. Super popular unit used it many other projects.
One dollar cheap, popular. You can water your flowers with it, you can do many things with it. Its very small, compact and very cheap and when it came out it was 100 times cheaper than everything else with similar functionality.
NRF24L01-module. This one gives us two way radio communication and it’s also a micro controller. We have physical pcb with usb connector. You can program it and make your own programs as well.
Teensy 3.2 is a very simple, small board with a ‘big’ microcontroller (72 MHz). It has a lot of power. Teensy is actually quite a workhorse here.
Why we have decided to use all of it?
From the architectural point of view: One unit is responsible for one task and it lets the other have focus on radio communication, WiFi, controlling etc.
Those components are good for us and for the maker community. They are arduino compatible, there are already existing libraries, people are already using it, programming it and it’s easily accessible for everyone. It accelerates development for us, but it also help develop ready-to-use solutions for makers, hackers, and all sorts of geeks.
I believe any other company wouldn’t do it like this. Its risky. But I want to show you why it’s worth it.
Alicja w Krainie Open Source 