Previously published This article was previously published on lhexapod.com as part of my journey of discovery into robotics and embedded assembly programming. A full index of these articles can be found here.
For those of you interested in the kind of thing that this blog is about you might also find ChipHacker.com useful. It’s a ‘stackoverflow’ for embedded programming and electronics people. Hopefully it will become a useful resource!
Previously published This article was previously published on lhexapod.com as part of my journey of discovery into robotics and embedded assembly programming. A full index of these articles can be found here.
The test code for the serial command processing code for my serial servo controller is turning out to be the largest piece of assembly language that I’ve written. This means that all of a sudden I’m coming across “Relative branch out of reach” errors during the compile.
Previously published This article was previously published on lhexapod.com as part of my journey of discovery into robotics and embedded assembly programming. A full index of these articles can be found here.
The AVR assembly language unit tests that I spoke of last week are going well. I decided to explore the idea of unit testing by writing tests for the easier to test aspects of the serial protocol code and then, as this went well, I decided to write tests for the serial protocol code in order rather that simply jumping to write tests for the code that I know is broken.
Previously published This article was previously published on lhexapod.com as part of my journey of discovery into robotics and embedded assembly programming. A full index of these articles can be found here.
As I mentioned yesterday the servo controller project has got to the point where being able to unit test the code would be useful to me. In my day job as a C++ server developer I’ve been using unit tests for several years and most of the code that I write is written in a Test Driven Development style.
Previously published This article was previously published on lhexapod.com as part of my journey of discovery into robotics and embedded assembly programming. A full index of these articles can be found here.
Way back at the beginning of this journey I mentioned the fact that I’d quite like to be able to use some of the development disciplines that I use in my day job during the development of the firmware for my hexapod.
Previously published This article was previously published on lhexapod.com as part of my journey of discovery into robotics and embedded assembly programming. A full index of these articles can be found here.
I’m in the process of integrating the stand alone code that implements my ‘multi-servo move’ command and the rest of the controller. It’s harder than it should be, probably because I’m not experienced enough yet with assembly language not to have made some school boy errors.
Previously published This article was previously published on lhexapod.com as part of my journey of discovery into robotics and embedded assembly programming. A full index of these articles can be found here.
The work on turning my excel spreadsheet into AVR assembler code which can move multiple servos to arrive at their target locations at the same time is proceeding well. I have the required code operating in a stand alone environment in the simulator and all I need to do now is merge that in with the rest of the code… Once that’s done my servo controller is complete and whilst I already know that there are at least two further versions in the pipeline I expect I’ll move onto something more before working on them.
Previously published This article was previously published on lhexapod.com as part of my journey of discovery into robotics and embedded assembly programming. A full index of these articles can be found here.
The final command for my serial servo controller is the most complex. The idea behind it is that with a hexapod leg you will want to be able to move the leg to a new position where the new position requires all three of the servos that manage the leg to move to potentially new locations.
Previously published This article was previously published on lhexapod.com as part of my journey of discovery into robotics and embedded assembly programming. A full index of these articles can be found here.
Work on the latest version of the serial servo controller is going well. I’d accumulated a pile of random nice to have ideas, some of which then necessitated some other ideas, and then there was the one must have command (the one which moves several servos to new positions over time and ensures that they all arrive at their final resting places at the same time).
Previously published This article was previously published on lhexapod.com as part of my journey of discovery into robotics and embedded assembly programming. A full index of these articles can be found here.
Having discussed my serial communication issues on AVRFreaks I’ve decided that I need a new design for the servo controller.
My current design is very successful in doing what I set out to do, which was to give priority to the PWM generation aspect of the code.
