Servo - November 2011

THIS MONTH:

Due Digilence

THE USB I/O EXPLORER FROM DIGILENT.

This month, we have the opportunity to present the USB I/O Explorer from Digilent. The I/O Explorer is a dedicated USB peripheral device choc full of sensors so intrepid roboticists can practice their programming skills by writing applications to interact with real world inputs. The I/O Explorer is a bit different from the projects we’re used to – with Evan’s mechanical engineering background, we’re most accustomed to adding new mechanisms and sensors to tweak kits. We would describe our programming skill set as instrumental – we do what it takes to get by, kind of like MacGyver. We shoehorn lines of code together that might not normally have any business next to each other, but it will get the robot through the maze in one piece. The I/O Explorer, however, is all about the coding. The sophisticated array of sensors and expansion ports take the guesswork out of equipping your device with the means to gather data from the outside world, allowing you to focus on writing the code capable of dealing with such a wealth of information. We hope the I/O Explorer will help us refine our coding skills to be a little more James Bond and a little less MacGyver.

I/O Explorer: First Class

The I/O Explorer is an impressive and highly evolved device, so it makes sense that the process of designing it was one of experimentation and incremental advancement. Before the I/O Explorer burst onto the scene, the diligent folks at Digilent were working on a number of Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) boards. The Adept software system was originally designed to download configuration files to the FPGA boards. The Adept software was soon expanded to move data back and forth between the FPGA boards and the software application on the PC. The culminating result is the Adept software application that allows users to discover connected devices, configure them, and transfer data between the device and the computer. The software application has