Here are a couple of pictures of my Omega 2 powered robot. I'm using the PWM Expansion on the Power Dock, and it's working not too badly.

On the proto board is basically this circuit, one for each motor and using the PWM signal output instead. I had to switch the 270 ohm resistor for a 100 ohm resistor before the motors would move...not sure why?

I also had trouble with stability at first. The Omega kept locking up/crashing and wouldn't come back after a few power cycles. Other times it would work perfectly. I ended up adding 4xAA batteries feeding the PWM Expansion through the barrel connector and that seems to have helped (fingers crossed).

Note that the PWM controller keeps its last known setting if the Omega2 crashes/reboots, so I had a runaway robot a few times.

Still tinkering, but I thought I would share with all of you. Right now I'm just using pwm-exp from the command line to control the motors, working on a Python script to run sequences and/or listen for UDP packets to control it with.

Dug a bit deeper and it seems GPIO11 is reserved for the reset button, etc. It's just not shown on the dock pinouts, it appears to be free i.e.

Reference:

https://docs.onion.io/omega2-docs/using-gpios.html#pins-at-boot
http://onioniot.github.io/wiki/Documentation/Hardware/Omega-Hardware.html

So I think I'll be OK using a different GPIO, but would be nice to understand what's going on here a little more and have that shown in the dock pinouts.

A couple of years ago I posted my first version of an Omega2-Powered Robot which was a lot of fun and well received.

However, it had a few issues:

• The robot base was a bit tippy
• The motor driver circuit was a little hokey, and couldn't handle much current
• Forward motion only

So I've made a new one, using the same basic architecture (Omega2, PWM Expansion, python) with a few improvements:

• Replaced the base with one from a "Thunder Tumbler" RC Car
• Used a TB6612FNG as the motor driver, for forward/reverse and higher current (Sparkfun Breakout)
• Reworked the python code significantly

Here it is!

It works really well! Not visible are the 4x AA batteries in the base to power the motor.

The code and datasheets are up on GitHub if anyone's interested: https://github.com/LeifBloomquist/OmegaBot/

I'm also working on a way to control it with the LEAP Motion (hand gestures), will post a video once that's working.

As a followup to my Commodore 64 Omega2 Interface, I've designed a small and simple custom board that allows the Omega to be connected to any "retro" computer that has a DB25 RS232 port.

As you can see, it works beautifully on a WYSE terminal in VT100 mode!

The hardest part was waiting 6 weeks for the super-rare 2mm headers to arrive from China

On the topic of ideas: I want to use an Omega2 to supercharge retro computers like the Commodore 64. Give it more storage, Wi-Fi, and so on. I've already done this with an Arduino (link) but a real Linux command-line through the Omega would be amazing.

Interface would be through serial, so the second UART on the Omega2 is very welcome.

I also got it working on a Tandy m100, at a blazing 300 baud!

Way back in August last year I had an idea to "supercharge" my Commodore 64 with the Omega 2(+). This would require a second serial port, so the addition of ttyS1 on the Omega 2 worked out great for this.

Here's the breadboard circuit, using a 74HC245 for voltage level shifting (3.3V to 5V):

Attached:

It works!

Well I kinda have something workable, with the parts I listed above.

I had to file down the shroud on the 8-pin headers so I could squeeze two together to fit, but it worked.

That said, I still haven't been able to actually boot up the Omega in this configuration, as per this thread.

Pics:

I tried this yesterday with no success.

I supplied 3.3V to the Omega through an MCP-3302E which should have provided the correct 3.3v and up to 250 mA, which should be sufficient? Any issues with this?

There's some conflicting information in this thread, is there a definitive list of the minimum connections?

There are two RST pins, RSt and FW RST, do they both have to be connected to GND?

Do I have to connect both GND pins?

Hmm, the 2mm headers themselves are pretty hard to find. This would fit the bill:

http://www.sullinscorp.com/category75/NPPN161BFCN-RC/
https://www.digikey.ca/short/3mpv8f

Minimum order 1000!

Hi all,

Have been playing around with my OmegaBot some more, and I've noticed that if I don't have the LiPo battery completely charged, the Omega turns off (stops responding, LED goes out) the instant I use one of the PWM outputs.

How can this be? I'm using an external 6V power supply (4 AA batteries) on the PWM Expansion barrel jack, and this supply is supposed to be isolated from the Omega's 5V supply (info)

Any suggestions appreciated

Yes, those work perfectly and are used to determine the device is there.

But there is no way to read the actual range data without a lot of i2c back-and-forth with their custom protocol.

There are python libraries to handle this, but none of them work on the Omega (yet)

Hi all,

I recently picked up a VL53L0X "Time of Flight Range Sensor" (Adafruit, datasheets) to use with my OmegaBot and other projects, ideally with Python.

It was only $15, but I was still dismayed to learn that, while it uses i2c, the registers aren't public and they have a proprietary protocol to talk to it. It does work though, it shows up in i2cdetect. There are precompiled libraries for Raspberry Pi etc, which obviously won't work on the Omega as-is. (I did try, there's a couple in the openwrt Python package library but they just crash on install)

So I'm wondering what the shortest path would be to get this running? There's a few readily available C libraries that would have to be re-compiled as a python module, but I have no idea how difficult that is for the Omega.

Adafruit library: https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_VL53L0X
Pimoroni python library: https://github.com/pimoroni/VL53L0X-python
Python library for Raspberry Pi: https://github.com/johnbryanmoore/VL53L0X_rasp_python

etc, etc.

Any advice?

@György-Farkas In series, using single-use for now since that's what I have on hand. But rechargeables would probably work.

The battery holder is just one of these, though it came with the R/C car and the cover is a slightly different shape.

Thanks for the detailed explanation!

Though it makes me wonder why GPIO11 is on the breakout header at all. It doesn't seem usable by end users.

A couple of years ago I posted my first version of an Omega2-Powered Robot which was a lot of fun and well received.

However, it had a few issues:

• The robot base was a bit tippy
• The motor driver circuit was a little hokey, and couldn't handle much current
• Forward motion only

So I've made a new one, using the same basic architecture (Omega2, PWM Expansion, python) with a few improvements:

• Replaced the base with one from a "Thunder Tumbler" RC Car
• Used a TB6612FNG as the motor driver, for forward/reverse and higher current (Sparkfun Breakout)
• Reworked the python code significantly

Here it is!

It works really well! Not visible are the 4x AA batteries in the base to power the motor.

The code and datasheets are up on GitHub if anyone's interested: https://github.com/LeifBloomquist/OmegaBot/

I'm also working on a way to control it with the LEAP Motion (hand gestures), will post a video once that's working.

Dug a bit deeper and it seems GPIO11 is reserved for the reset button, etc. It's just not shown on the dock pinouts, it appears to be free i.e.

Reference:

https://docs.onion.io/omega2-docs/using-gpios.html#pins-at-boot
http://onioniot.github.io/wiki/Documentation/Hardware/Omega-Hardware.html

So I think I'll be OK using a different GPIO, but would be nice to understand what's going on here a little more and have that shown in the dock pinouts.

Hi all,

I'm trying to use the PWM Expansion module along with a GPIO (11) as an output. Though as soon as I set the output mode on the GPIO, all the I2C devices vanish, disabling the PWM Expansion module.

Nothing is connected, just the Omega2 on a Power Dock with the PWM Expansion on top. I even have a rubber spacer in between the two to avoid any shorts. I've used the PWM Expansion on its own in past projects, has worked fine.

On bootup, everything looks fine:

root@Omega-10D9:~# i2cdetect -y 0
     0  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  a  b  c  d  e  f
00:          -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
10: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
20: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
30: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
40: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
50: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 5a -- -- -- -- --
60: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
70: 70 -- -- -- -- -- -- --

Great! 5A is the PWM Expansion (not sure what 70 is). But then I run this little python script:

import onionGpio

gpio11 = onionGpio.OnionGpio(11)
gpio11.setOutputDirection(0)

And wham, no more I2C devices:

root@Omega-10D9:~# i2cdetect -y 0
     0  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  a  b  c  d  e  f
00:          -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
10: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
20: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
30: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
40: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
50: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
60: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
70: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

Any suggestions? I specifically chose GPIO11 because it's not associated with any other function.

Thanks!

I'd love to be able to get a couple of pre-made, populated PCBs for this. Looks great.

That might not even be the best way to go about it - I hacked around a bit until I got something that worked. Pointed inittab to that script file.

More details and discussion in this thread: https://community.onion.io/topic/2239/commodore-64-supercharged-by-omega2-pictures