Installation

This is a short description on how to install EyeBot, hardware version M6. The EyeBot system itself is already completely assembled, so you are able to start right away. Yellow dots in the drawing indicate pin no.1 of the corresponding connectors, For the Servo's the yellow circle indicates which pin to connect the yellow/white wire to.

Connectors

For Pinouts see Hardware section.

Camera
To work with EyeBot, two EyeCam CMOS digital color cameras (352x288 in bayer pattern) are being used. The cameras plug directly into the controller board (make sure you connect pin no.1 where indicated, the camera board should face down).

LCD
The LCDisplay is already connected to the EyeBot. The screen is cabable of displaying text and graphics with a large number of colours. The screen can display a max text resolution of 60 characters by 17 lines. The Pixel area of the full screen is 480x272

Power Supply
There is a connector for power supply with pins labelled "+" and "-". Connect a power supply between 8 and 15 Volts. 12 Volts is highly recommended for versatility and stability.
The board is equipped with a reconstitutable fuse. However, supplying a high voltage or reversing the voltage may damage the board.

Serial Connector
A standard 9-pin RS-232 extension cable can be used to connect EyeBot's serial-1 port to a PC, Mac or workstation. This will give you access to terminal shell functionality on the eyebot. Please note commands are linux not Windows commands. Alternatively connect the ethernet port into a network and you will be able to use putty or the ssh command in a linux shell to log in.

DC Motor and Encoder Connectors
There are 4 connectors for DC motors and encoders. Four motor drivers are integrated in EyeBot. The pinouts are not pin compatible with the M5 version so check. from:

Servo Connectors
There are 14 connectors in which you can directly plug servos (motors controlled by PWM, like in model airplanes). Most standard servo connectors are pin compatible (see servo info): Please note:
  • Some servo manufacturers use different pin-out.
  • A servo's maximum turning angle and turning direction can be set by software. E.g. for the HiTech HS81, the min. and max. angle is assumed for PWM pulses of 0.74 ms and 2.14 ms, so this is represented by HDT timing entries 740 and 2140. See HDT info for details. Note the servo's do not run off the Gumstix, they run through the FPGA, if the FPGA is not configured correctly for the servo's they aren't going to work.
    • Infrared Connector
    There are 6 connectors for infra-red sensors. All control logic is included in the EyeBot. The connectors are pin compatible for infrared sensors from: Speaker Connector
    The eyebot has an AC97 audio chip, so in addition to the onboard speaker you may connect a 3.5mm Headphones jack to connector J2 which will then route audio through this jack.

    Microphone
    A minature microphone is built-in on the front side of the EyeBot. Currently too weak to use, please plug in an external mike to connector J3 .

    Extension Connectors
    There are 2 separate connectors for adding additional I/O.

    Background Debugger
    To Troubleshoot an Eyebot M6, connect either a Windows Machine running hyperterminal with Baud B4800, stop bits 1 parity none, or do the same with a Linux machine running minicom. Connect with a serial cable and start the bot after a connection is running to watch for debugging information as the robot starts.

    Thomas Bräunl, 2008