RoboSlam
When we were first introduced to the Robo sumo design project we were stuck with a day long course called Roboslam, which is where you get the basics of a robot working. Everyone was immediately interested with the project and its outline. We were given a bag of components including LEDs, Resistors, Motor, wheels, Wires. But by far the most intriguing component was the MSP430. We assembled our robot according to the instructions and managed to get first off the LED on the bread boarding blinking, and furthermore we got the robot moving in a zigzag fashion. Next week is getting it to move in a predetermined direction and maneuvering effectively.
MSP430 & Energia
The MSP430 is a mixed-signal controller family from Texas Instruments. Built around a 16-bit CPU, the MSP430 is designed for low cost and, specifically, low power consumption embedded applications. The MSP430 immediately struck me as a very powerful tool in the creation of this project. The chip is programmed through a launch pad. You can control the input and output pins and code it to perform various tasks this way using the C programming language. The C programming language is widely used and lots of information to be found on it online. While researching programming for the MSP430 I came across a program called Energia. Energia is an open-source electronics prototyping platform started by Robert Wessels in January of 2012 with the goal to bring the Wiring and Arduino framework to the Texas Instruments MSP430 based LaunchPad. This was great as I had worked with Arduino before and the framework before. The more I looked into it the more I found this could be of great value to me in the later stage of the project. For now all the code had been fed to us and we were doing some classes to try and understand the C that was being used, which was very helpful and gave me a greater understanding of how the chip worked. So for now I don’t need this program but I have a feeling it may come in useful.
adventuresofderek 