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Issue #224 March 2009

Vision-Guided Robotics
A Next-Generation Balancing Robot
by Hanno Sander

Start | Parallax Propeller | ViewPort | The DanceBot | Frame Grabber | Real-Time Tracking | Line Following With A Camera | Track A Pattern | Find A Beer Bottle | Wrap Up | Sources & PDF

VIEWPORT

Parallax offers a free tool to load programs written in assembly or a high-level language called Spin to the Propeller. This is fine for getting started writing simple programs, but I quickly determined that I needed a more powerful debugging tool to develop and configure my vision-powered balancing robot—an application I now call ViewPort.

I started by dedicating one of the eight cogs to continuously share data stored in the Propeller’s memory with a PC application. This enabled me to monitor and change variables while the other seven cogs ran at full speed. When I added a module that sampled all 32 I/O pins at 80 MHz, other designers became interested in using my application to debug their integration code—and ViewPort was born. Since then, I’ve added other capabilities to the ViewPort application to turn it into a complete debugging package. You can download a free 30-day trial of ViewPort at http://mydancebot.com.

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