Lego PCB
From JopWiki
LRBJOP: A Lego Robot Printed Circuit Board for JOP
Contents |
[edit] Abstract
LEGO MindStorms is a robotics invention system of the LEGO Group. It was intended for children, but it turned out to be a great toy for adults, too. It combines electric components like sensors and actuators with Lego bricks and Lego Technic parts, such as gears, wheels and axles, to build robots and other automated or interactive systems.
The Lego invention systems have a powerful infrastructure which makes it easy to construct various kinds of mechanical and electric systems, like robots. However, in the case of Lego MindStorms, there are essential limitations to the program-capabilities (e.g. no usage of variables, expressions and function calls in the RCX code). Therefore, a more powerful processor is desirable.
In this project, we use Lego MindStorms sensors and actors, but build our own Printed Circuit Board named LRBJOP, to use the Java Optimized Processor JOP as a central processing unit instead of the Lego RCX. The result is a PCB which provide everything needed to control robots with JOP, and has some additional features to play with, too.
Based on the first prototype and the evaluation of the Lego motors and sensors by Martin Schoeberl, the students Alexander Dejaco and Peter Hilber then designed and constructed the PCB.
A part list, the Eagle Design files, as well as guides how to install the USB drivers are available at our site, click here.
The documentation to the lego.lib Java API can be found here.
[edit] Features
- step-down dc-dc regulator for efficient generation of the 3,3 VCC supply voltage
- three motor interfaces via h-bridges (HIP4020)
- back-EMF (back-electromotive force) reading on two motors
- three adc sensor inputs
- three simple inputs
- four buttons
- four leds
- amplified speaker output (LM386)
- microphone input circuit
- sd card slot
- usb connector
- usb device (FT2232C - used to upload design and program via usb)
- serial connector
- grid with connections for three serial devices
- another grid with supply and connections for free usage
- a programmable logic device (PLD) which handles additional inputs to the processor
- a suitable API for JOP is also provided
