Arduino to use or not to use?

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jonnyhas
Posts: 55
Joined: Jun 5th, 2012, 7:45 am
Location: highlands, scotland

Arduino to use or not to use?

Post by jonnyhas »

I am toiling with the idea of switching over to using an arduino uno for my rov, although i am not going to use this in the rov itself ( if what i want is acheviable ) my basic requirement is i would like compass and possible depth overlay on screen, so am wondering can i set up and arduino topside with compass and depth feeding information along a rs485 link, (i have limited knowledge regarding this but am quick to learn and like a challenge), spark fun have a i2c compass breakout board and i could purchase and I2c - rs485 convertor and rs485 chip for the arduino, which i have seen advertised but is it as simple as this ( i realise there is programming to be done)?

cheers Jonny
rossrov
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Joined: Feb 28th, 2013, 5:01 pm
Location: Australia

Re: Arduino to use or not to use?

Post by rossrov »

Hi again Jonny. This forum is becoming an addiction for me! If you are going to learn how to use Arduino or any other microcontroller for topside anyway, then you would be much better off using one in the ROV to do the conversion from I2C to RS485, than using a hardware converter. You will no doubt find other uses for the micro in addition to compass and depth. See this topic viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1047

Compass: Make sure that the compass is tilt-compensated, but beware that the cheaper tilt-compensated compasses require the user to do the number crunching of 3 axes in the micro. You will be able to find someone else has already done that part of the code if you do not want to do that yourself (I wouldn't). More expensive modules can be had that do it all internally but are over $100 or so

Useful stuff here I recon:

http://www.robot-electronics.co.uk/htm/cmps10doc.htm

I purchased a non-compensated (for a non-ROV application) and it was extremely sensitive to tilt - useless on it's own.
jpWA
Posts: 46
Joined: Feb 9th, 2013, 10:07 am
Location: Atlanta, Ga, USA

Re: Arduino to use or not to use?

Post by jpWA »

what ports would an RS485 chip on an arduino use ? I know you can get converters for the usb port, but they can get a bit expensive and take up significant space. All the pwm ports are used up in my plan, which involves the arduino onboard the rov.
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KR2_Diving
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Joined: Aug 30th, 2012, 11:43 am
Location: Currently: NW Suburbs of Chicago. Originally: NE Wisconsin

Re: Arduino to use or not to use?

Post by KR2_Diving »

jpWA wrote:what ports would an RS485 chip on an arduino use ?
There are a few options. The simplest option is to use pin 0 and pin 1 which are the Rx and Tx pins.

There is another option that would allow you to use any of the pins via the Soft Serial library. I do not have any experience with this, however, I can say that the library that I use has been well written and someone who is not familiar with coding should be able to get a general grasp on things.

I have put all the details together in this post.
jpWA
Posts: 46
Joined: Feb 9th, 2013, 10:07 am
Location: Atlanta, Ga, USA

Re: Arduino to use or not to use?

Post by jpWA »

Great, Thanks!
aquajack
Posts: 26
Joined: Mar 20th, 2012, 5:33 pm

Re: Arduino to use or not to use?

Post by aquajack »

As a member of a MATE ROV team we used lab view and arduino extensively as they interface well and it is simple to make a great GUI.
dna1990
Posts: 48
Joined: Mar 14th, 2013, 6:36 pm

Re: Arduino to use or not to use?

Post by dna1990 »

aquajack - ever had any experience using "Processing" as a platform for running a GUI for the Arduino?

http://www.processing.org/

Curious if anyone could compare the two for me. I have played with Processing for a few weeks, but have not used LabView (NXT-G is the closest I have used, grin). So before I went and delved into getting a copy of LabView and walking the learning curve, thought I would ask. For this project, only looking for the GUI capabilities, the actual programming of the Arduino, we have covered with straight code.
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