Time to do some tuning of the motion control parameters in Decimus. First I wanted to get some idea of how it is behaving with the initial settings. I have added a simple flight recorder function. A 4 kB buffer can hold up to 2000 integers. These are placed in the buffer on every timer tick. Thus I can record one second of two integers. this isn’t much but it is all I have available on the processor. Any future mouse will have to have a bigger data buffer.
After a bit of a break, I have done some more work on Decimus, my DC micromouse. With all the peripherals tested and working, I have been concentrating on the motion controller or profiler. This has turned out to be harder than I expected. The basic idea is simple enough but the implementation turns out to be a bit tricky. Probably in part because I wanted it to be useable with Primus, the beginner’s stepper-driven micromouse.
After a lot of messing about with other stuff, Primus is now back on track and has the basic motion code written and installed. Movement within the maze is possible with steering off the walls to prevent collisions; fixed size moves and in-place turns are functioning; forward error detection and correction is working.