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Thu, 17 Aug 2006
programming the RS232 version of the ARM7 processor via radio
We produce a small number of SRV-1 controllers with RS232 connectors, as the original SRV-1 robots used these processor cards. We wanted to note that it's possible to upload firmware to these cards via the radio, but you have to first remove the 4 jumpers on the processor card, as shown here -
and then follow the normal programming steps as described in SRV_setup.html, placing the jumper on JP4 before starting LPC21ISP, as shown here -
Note that you can also upload firmware via the RS232, but you have to replace the 4 processor card jumpers, and then removing the left-most radio jumper at JP2 that is shown in the photo above.
If you don't have an RS232 version of the SRV-1 controller board, just ignore this post. If you do have the RS232 version, you'll find that this approach to programming via radio is a lot more convenient than an earlier suggestion we made about making a special DB-9 connector.
Posted Thu, 17 Aug 2006 16:19 | HTML Link | see additional stories ...
test version of SRV-1 firmware with camera interface at 921600 baud
Thanks again to suggestions by Per Dalgas Jakobsen of the Danish Technological Institute, we found that the interface data rate between the camera module and the ARM7 can be increased from 115200 to 921600 baud, which significantly increases our frame capture rate. Note that this doesn't result in an improvement in viewing frame rate, as the bandwidth of the radio interface has remained the same, but for applications which use the onboard ARM7 for real-time image processing, the increased frame rate is very important.
We have created a test version of code with this functionality. We haven't posted a link on the main SRV-1 download page, but SRV-1 users are welcome to give this a try.
http://www.surveyor.com/srvdownload/srv1.hex.081706
The corresponding firmware source code snapshot which was used to build this version is found here - http://www.surveyor.com/srvdownload/srv-081706.zip
Please note that live viewing using this version will seem to be somewhat less smooth with longer latency than before, as we have to buffer the full incoming frame before sending. Previously, we were interleaving receive and send because incoming (from camera) and outgoing (to radio) baud rates matched, thus providing a smoother flow. Not certain yet, but we might want to create a dual-mode version of firmware that supports the old 115200 capture rate for users who just want to view and don't care about the image processing functions. In any case, the higher capture rate is a big boost for development of applications which use image processing, and this is an area in which we have keen interest.
Posted Thu, 17 Aug 2006 15:31 | HTML Link | see additional stories ...