Old SPU

Please note this information was written for the TS-7260 board. While some of it may still be relevant, the entry point for information on the TS-7800 currently in use is the Processing Platform page.

Background

After considering options like Gumstix and cheap x86 based systems, We've decided to go with the TS-7260 ARM-9 board from Technologic Systems . This board has a lot of good points, including lots of serial ports, 200 MIPs performance at stunningly low power consumption (< 1 watt), Linux in on-board flash, digital, SPI, RS-485, USB, Ethernet, and analog interfaces on-board. It boots in less than 2 seconds and is pretty easy to work with if you know Linux. It's been playa-proven as the controller for the L3K LED installation.

Here's the TS-7260 hardware manual (pdf) and the guide to Linux on the TS-7000 boards (pdf) (These links may break when TS revises the documentation; refer to the Technologic website if that happens)

Configure the IP on the 7260 by editing /etc/sysconfig/ifcfg-eth0. Because I'm lazy I'm using the 1 subnet so you may need to change NETWORK and BROADCAST as well as IPADDR

sub-modules

We need to talk to the following modules from the brain. Most of these we can do over serial.

   * ETek GPS
   * Sensor module: Nav, IMU, compass, etc.
   * Motor Speed Controller, incl. current sense, drive speed and steer position sensor
   * XBee Pro com board 

Plus the artistic payload:

   * Illumination module
   * Sounds module 

Port List

This is a canonical list of which modules talk to which TS-7260 ports.

Note that COM1 has the console daemon attached to it: you must kill that (and remove it from the startup script) before you can use it for general I/O.

   * COM1
   * COM2 Note TS ribbon connector red stripe must match header pin 1 dot. So ribbon goes towards inside of board.
   * COM3
   * COM4 (3.3v TTL level)
   * COM5 (3.3v TTL level)
   * SPI
   * DIO (general purpose digital i/o, 3.3V)
   * XDIO (powerful digital I/O including glitch detectors, PWM, quadrature and edge counting, and pulse timing with IRQ/DRQ support. Unfortunately, not available with extra 2 com ports.
   * ADC2 Channel 2 of the ADC
   * ADC4 Channel 4 of the ADC
   * USB (has drivers for mouse and keyboard support)