Core responsibilities of Control Module - an initial brain dump
Manage the different inputs from the Sensory Module (inertial data, rpm etc.)
Derive the algorithm to provide the required parameters to the Drive train (power etc.) based on the sensor data
A good to have is some mode of blinking led/beep alarm mechanism for low battery
Additionally Diagnostic data to get outliers and capturing statistics to a minimal extent might be helpful.
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What platforms are being considered for the Main board ? I'd like someone to check if the Parallax Propeller can be used.
The P8X32A Propeller micro-controller is:
+ open source hardware
+ octal core (Cogs)
+ RTOS functionality
Notes from the Propeller manual :
+ The memory map is flat. There is no need for paging schemes with blocks of code,
data or variables. This is a big time-saver during application development.
+Asynchronous events are easier to handle than they are with devices that use
interrupts. The Propeller has no need for interrupts; just assign some cogs to
individual, high-bandwidth tasks and keep other cogs free and unencumbered. The
result is a more responsive application that is easier to maintain.
+ The Propeller Assembly language features conditional execution and optional result
writing for each individual instruction. This makes critical, multi-decision blocks of
code more consistently timed; event handlers are less prone to jitter and developers
spend less time padding, or squeezing, cycles here and there.
More details at these links :
http://www.parallax.com/sites/default/files/downloads/P8X32A-Web-PropellerManual-v1.2.pdf
http://www.parallax.com/search?search_api_views_fulltext=P8X32A