Copyright (c) 2020 Damien Le Moal.
This simple program illustrates how to control servos with a Linux application, using a PCA9685 16-channels I2C PWM controller. The application demonstrated here controls a 6 DoF robotic arm. The servos iused are MG996R.
For native compilation, make sure the ncurses library and its development
headers are installed. Then simply execute make to compile the program.
Cross compilation is defined for RISC-V no MMU environment. To cross compile, run:
> make CROSS_COMPILE=riscv64-buildroot-linux-uclibc-
CC main.c
CC pca9685.c
CC servo.c
Building demo
Simply run:
> sudo ./demo /dev/i2c-X
Where /dev/i2c-X is the I2C device file name of the master I2C device to which
the PCA9685 controller is attached. To find out which device file to use, the
i2cdetect command can be used.
i2cdetect -l
i2c-3 i2c i915 gmbus dpd I2C adapter
i2c-1 i2c i915 gmbus dpc I2C adapter
i2c-6 i2c AUX A/port E I2C adapter
i2c-4 i2c CP2112 SMBus Bridge on hidraw0 I2C adapter
i2c-2 i2c i915 gmbus misc I2C adapter
i2c-0 i2c i915 gmbus dpb I2C adapter
i2c-5 i2c AUX B/port B I2C adapter
In the above example, the I2C master used is a CP2112 chip based USB-to-I2C
bridge, represented as /dev/i2c-4. The demo application can list I2C adapters
using the -l option.
> ./demo -h
Usage: ./demo [options] <i2c dev>
Options:
-h: help
-l: list i2c adapters
-a <addr (HEX)>: i2c slave address
The demo application has an internal menu to control operations.
./demo /dev/i2c-4
Connecting i2c servo controller at 0x40, 50 Hz on /dev/i2c-4...
Resetting controller...
Moving to initial position...
Command ('h' for help): h
Commands:
h: Help
i: Interactive mode. Type servo number
(0 to 5), then arrow up/down to move
r: Reset to initial position
d: Run demonstration
q: Quit
Command ('h' for help):
This video shows a 6-DoF robot arm in action with a tiny SiPeed K210 RISC-V board used as a host.
The Linux kernel tree for this board is available here, in the branch k210-sysctl-v12. The root FS was built using this buildroot tree.