ARDUINO NETWORK TO SHARE THE WORKLOAD?

Hello,

I'm working on a project that requires to have a cycle time of 10ms (100Hz) to read data from a gyroscope/accelerometer
(MPU 6050) elaborate and control the balance of an inverted pendulum.

Arduino UNO performance are at the limit, if I want to add many more features like:

-communication with pc
-digital I/O
-distance sensors
-etc

To avoid slowing down the cycle, I thought to connect 2/3arduino in I2C network and share the workload, is a good choice?

Or maybe it's better to use a Board more handsome? (like Arduino TWO, or other)

Thanks

To avoid slowing down the cycle, I thought to connect 2/3arduino in I2C network and share the workload, is a good choice?

What part of the workload are you planning to share? Adding more Arduinos could be like getting two women pregnant in the hopes of having a baby in 4.5 months instead of 9.

I didn't know you could do that.

Yes, the wonders of technology these days :wink:

I have a board with 2 '328Ps, pins to connect SPI-SPI or I2C-I2C, RS232 to outside world if wanted, or connect up to an FTDI or CP2102 module for USB. Plenty of IO this way, and "dual core" once you figure out how to share tasks.

http://www.crossroadsfencing.com/BobuinoRev17/

I think multiple chips is sort of the point of those IMU boards that people make. Pololu sells one with an ARM Cortex that gives 1 KHz updates for a pretty penny and talks over a TTL serial link at 115200 bps. I'm going to bet that SPI and I2C have much lower overhead. If you already have one Uno doing your sensor fusion or whatever, then have another one running your PID loops and communications. I REALLY like the "two pregnant ladies" analogy, and I plan on using it in the future, but it's my opinion that the "multi-core" approach is actually appropriate for things that have groups of very different tasks that need to mostly run independently.

@ Nick Gammon... We learned how to do that in Boy Scouts. The really advanced Merit badge was awarded for 3 in 3 month's...

Bob

3 in 3 months - that's too much :wink:

Docedison:
@ Nick Gammon... We learned how to do that in Boy Scouts.

When you were young, wasn't that a boys-only organization?