NetDuino Plus 2

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a_shorething
Posts: 289
Joined: Sep 10th, 2013, 5:26 pm
Location: New Jersey Shore

NetDuino Plus 2

Post by a_shorething »

To all;

When I started looking into building an ROV over a year ago I wanted to start with a clean sheet and no assumptions. I went to the OpenROV kickstarter page and their website, following their logic for why they chose to do different things and immediately saw some assumptions that on the face were dubious and have since been proved to be problematic.

I think the project and the press that it's garnered (and the community) are all great, but the approach to me seems inherently flawed for a variety of reasons.

Then I sat down with everything I'd learned in my first few weeks/months of research (without actually getting wet! :)) and made a list of features, costs, benefits and drawbacks of different approaches.

One of the things on here was the 'brains' or main processor of the system. I gave some thought to various configurations of Arduino, Beaglebone, Raspberry Pi, and I included one I had read about but didn't hear anyone using which is the Netduino Plus 2 and that is the one that provided the most benefits (including widely used programming language) that fit into my project and was the cheapest when you include all of the minimum required features (I/O, Comm, processing power...)

Then I ignored all of the data and picked Arduino because it's what I had on the shelf. :)

Then I changed my mind when the Raspberry Pi came out with their HD webcam and decided to use that.

Then I decided the Rpi environment was a little too complicated for my tastes and decided on a hybrid Rpi (for webcam/vid storage) and Arduino with Network capability for control/comm and navigation cam (low res).

Now I've come full circle and I think I'm going to finally listen to my initial data and try the Netduino Plus 2.

ha ha. Wish me luck! (and if anyone has any experience with Netduino let me know)
rossrov
Posts: 383
Joined: Feb 28th, 2013, 5:01 pm
Location: Australia

Re: NetDuino Plus 2

Post by rossrov »

Hi a_shorething. No, no experience with the Netduino. I've read up some stuff on it after reading your post and agree that it would be better for certain jobs than RasPi or Arduino are. For me or anyone familiar with Arduino programming the new thing to learn appears to be the development environment. What have you found?

The main question from me is that could the Netduino handle input from a webcam, and pass that out via Ethernet? Yes, the old IP cam thing again :)

Good to read about the magnetic coupled thrusters on your project thread

Ross
a_shorething
Posts: 289
Joined: Sep 10th, 2013, 5:26 pm
Location: New Jersey Shore

Re: NetDuino Plus 2

Post by a_shorething »

Hey Rossrov,

Thanks for the reply.

I'm looking into the camera thing, but at first blush it doesn't look good. I don't think the ethernet is a full 10/100mbps (which I think Raspberry pi is). The port is there, but I don't think it can handle anywhere near 100mbps, at least natively. Still checking.

I might be limited to a low res USB cam thing. I'll see what I can find out and report back. I was actually thinking of just using one Ethernet cable with a splitter either topside (and splitting the wiring down there into two plugs) or in the ROV itself and either plugging in an IP cam directly or using the Raspberry pi as nothing more than a high res storage unit/webcam server since they have their HD cam and webcam software worked out pretty well.

I still want to go with an HD cam onboard that could be turned on to record stuff and store it locally and a low res (probably wide angle) navigation camera.

Once I find out more about the Netduino I'll report back. (one thing I love about the way I was able to get the UDP thing going is that all of my XBOX commands are just 3 bytes= SUPER THIN. and since I went UDP instead of TCP/IP there's not much traffic in the line. This should at least give me a chance to use the ethernet for other functions.)

One thing I do like about netduino is the debug environment where you can put in breakpoints (like a real programming language 8-) ) and step through it line-by-line so you know exactly what it's doing when you send it commands and input. The frustrating thing for me about Arduino and Rpi was that it was a case of trying to debug from 'outside' the code which can be time consuming and frustrating because you don't necessarily know what questions you're going to ask. (for example is the value null or does it have garbage or is it just out of scope?) these things are easy to see in a debugger in real time but hard to anticipate and report out if you have to compile and run from outside, you know?

Will report back...
rossrov
Posts: 383
Joined: Feb 28th, 2013, 5:01 pm
Location: Australia

Re: NetDuino Plus 2

Post by rossrov »

Cheers. In my microcontroller programming so far i haven't used or had the choice to use breakpoints. It's been very simple stuff, so printing out to an LCD or terminal at various points in a program has been all I've needed. The Netduino+2 and "development environment" look to be the next step. For an ROV, it seems overkill and over-complex to use an a operating system such as the RasPi does if the Netduino can do the camera, A to D, the ESCs all on the one board. In my Arduino and IP cam setup there are 3 bulky-ish boards: the IP cam, the Arduino, and the Ethernet switch, not to mention the interconnecting cables, power supplies etc....
I had a quick look at the microcontroller manual earlier this morning, and some other specs. Read something about 10Mbits/s Ethernet. Section 15 of the manual describes the camera interface. You probably read up about the cam interface, but I thought I'd mention it anyway.
http://www.st.com/st-web-ui/static/acti ... 031020.pdf
a_shorething
Posts: 289
Joined: Sep 10th, 2013, 5:26 pm
Location: New Jersey Shore

Re: NetDuino Plus 2

Post by a_shorething »

Wow, that looks like some really cool stuff, but it's over my head.

I'll have to do some more research to see how I can use that (if I can).

Thanks for the link!
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