I am new on this forum and new to the Arduino products. I have been reading on many sites and forums ad it appears that the Arduino is one of the most inexpensive and versatile micro controllers on the market to help in prototyping products.
I have a project where I need to daisy chain a series of micro controllers together and control them via a larger controller. Each micro controller would need to receive commands from the main controller and report status on the devices it controls. For the project in mind, I would ideally like to have all aspects of my line follower robot (motor driving, sensor arrays, obstacle sensor arrays etc) each controlled separately.
Each micro controller in command of these devices will need to be able to connect to the main controller on the fly and identify itself within the daisy chained micro controllers.
My question is what is the best type of micro controller to use for the lower level controllers and which should be used as my larger/main controller?
Why so many? A single Uno can do all that.
If multiple, then Promini would do. Connect all via I2C, give each one a unique I2C address that the main unit can contact it with.
My reasoning behind using multiple micros was that I thought my line following programming and obstacle evading programming would be easier to implement if I had multiple micros reporting back to the main one as they would be separate of each other therefore allowing me to override either of them with more ease, are you telling me this is not the case?
The communication between the Arduinos probably adds more complexity than doing everything on one device.
If you break the program into separate single purpose functions it should be easy to develop it on a single device. See planning and implementing a program.
Have just been doing some research and I do not think that the Arduino uno has enough analogue inputs for my project in mind, have you got any suggestions for alternatives? or any tips of how I could approach this differently?
many thanks
If you really do run out of suitable I/O pins I suggest you think of a max of 2 Arduinos and preferably organize stuff so that their tasks are as near as possible independent of each other. For example get one to bake the bread and the other to play the piano. They only come together at mealtimes.
Show us a list of all the stuff that you want to do.
CrossRoads
Well, for my line sensor array I was planning on using 8 IR sensors, but as the uno only has 6 inputs I would need to cut it down. In addition, this would leave me with no more analog inputs limiting me from making any additions in the near future.
Robin2
That is an interesting idea, but I would be limited in the sense that I need them to constantly be contacting each other as I would like my robot to be able to follow the line while also detecting if there is an obstacle placed in front of it at any point of the track, this would mean they would constantly need to be communicating with one task taking priority over the other at some points. Could that easily be done with two Arduino Unos?
Line follower:
-Line sensor array to detect black line on white surface
-Obstacle sensor array using ultrasonic sensor (to detect obstacle at any random time/point on the track)
-Motor driving circuitry for my two stepper motors (was thinking of using outside circuitry but if it can be controlled by the uno then that would be ideal)
-I would also like there to be space for improvement and the freedom to be able to add things as I wish after I am done with these above objectives
A slightly unrelated question, I have been provided with two stepper motors that I could use but I do not have any information about them, how can I find out specific details about them?
I have also been looking at purchasing the Arduino uno as part as one of those starter kits, would you recommend that?
I am planning on building my own sensor array comprising of 8 IR pairs of sensors. This will now have to be limited to 5 pairs because of the number of analog inputs. Am I mistaken in thinking that my IR sensors would not be connected to the analog inputs?
If you are using IR sensors on a black and white road system, then the outputs of the IRs will be HIGH or LOW.
This is digital, so you should be able to use digital inputs.
