Hi everybody, I have an idea for a project, but I would really like to know what all of you think about it.
I am going to develop a project involving RasperryPi with Machinekit and and a MCU from Microhip (atsame54 in particular). The main part of the project is implementing the Hardware Abstraction Layer on the MCU, and making it communicate with the RPi via SPI (or any other protocol, for what is worth) The idea is copying the Sitara (ARM processor with PRU embedded) with RPi and MCU. The Machinekit in the Rpi should see the HAL modules in the MCU and manage signals througth them, just like native modules. The MCU should have some predefined HAL module i.e. a PWM module allocable for certain PINs that takes PWM value from other module i.e a PID. Examples for MCU modules are PWM, frequency meter, a simple contact, a motor stepgen, a timer, logic (and, or, xor..), a coutner, a limiter... I think you got the idea. HAL signals should be able to go from and to any device (RPi-RPi / MCU-RPi / RPi-MCU / MCU-MCU) I think I can make it by implementing an HAL module for the RPi that communicates via SPI with the MCU, where the firmware receives the HAL configuration (modules to load and connection between them). The reason behind all that is making a PLC where Rpi and MCU cooperate to manage complex interfaces (video, ethernet, usb) and the machine (fast PWM, analogic signal, and a big number of PIN), and it would solve a problem of the comunication between the two. I.e a thing like OpenPLC uses just readPin(pin) writePin(Pin, value) to manage the communication, so the MCU is simply a pin expansion, I think it can do more. One thing that I consider important is that the MCU could (given the right implementation...) be stand alone, so RPi could be rebooted or removed where not necessary (cheaper PLC where no video is requested) What do you think about all that? Does it make sense? Is there anything that I can / should use to avoid reinvent the wheel or to stick to an API? I am referring to protobuf, or any piece of Machinetalk. Anything that I should look before starting? Obviously all of this would work with BB instead of RPi, but there is no reason for having both MCU and PRU. Any question is welcome! This could be my graduating project, I will talk about it with the prof. in these days. -- website: http://www.machinekit.io blog: http://blog.machinekit.io github: https://github.com/machinekit --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Machinekit" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/machinekit. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
