DSpace robot controller - Programming

Loading the Arduino software

Download the Arduino dev system from http://www.arduino.cc/ - click 'Download' and choose the appropriate download for your platform. Follow the instructions and unpack and install it.

Installing the robot support software

Download arduino-robot.zip from our web site

find out where your arduino software was installed (Linux users can install these files in a ~/arduino directory - the places your sketches will be installed) - look in the 'arduino' directory - you'll see 'hardware' and 'libraries' directories - unpack this zip file into this directory - when done correctly you'll see a 'dspace-robot' directory now inside the 'hardware' directory.

Start the Arduino application and choose the menu Tools->Board - there you should see a choice "DSpace robot 2.0" - if not you've probably installed the files in the wrong place - quit the Arduino app and fix the files, they try again.

Connecting to the Robot Board's USB serial connection on Windows

The robot board uses a serial terminal over USB connection to talk to the robot board

Windows users may need a .inf file to get their machine to recognise the USB serial port - here's a windows32 one and a windows64 one - download the appropriate one (or just download both), then (instructions for Vista, other types of Windows systems may vary):

open up the Control Panel
go to "Hardware and Sound"
choose "Add a Device"
find the Dspace Robot 2.0 device and right click to choose "Properties"
choose the "Hardware" tab and click "Properties"
On this page click "change settings"
Click "Update Driver"
Choose "Browse my computer for driver software"
Choose "let me pick from a list of drivers on my computer"
scroll down and double click "Ports (COM/LPT)"
Choose "Communication Ports" and click "Have Disk"
Use "Browse" to find the .inf file you downloaded
Click "OK" - you will return to the "Select the device driver ..." window - it will say "This driver is not digitally signed" that's OK - click "Next"
Windows will warn you "Installing this device driver is not recommended ..." that's largely because it hasn't figured out yet that it's really about to install one of its own internal USB drivers it already trusts - click "Yes"
wait until it finishes - you're done

Other flavours of Windows will be subtly different - if anyone wants to contribute instructions for their favourite version please let us know

Linux and Mac users should just find that their device starts working when it is plugged in - we have seen some problems on Macs with VodaPhone's vmodem software that does not play well with others and seems to get confused and think the robot is a modem you may not be able to use it at the same time as other serial USB devices like the DSpace robot that use the USB standard CDC interface

A simple test

Start the arduino software, in the Tools-<Boards directory choose "DSpace Robot 2.0". In Tools-<Serial Port menu choose the serial USB cable you just plugged in

Programming support

We've added a software library page showing our abstraction layer making it easier to use sensors and motors - we highly recommend that you use this to control the robot rather than writing directly to the output ports.