Micro dual software

I have been using the Pololu micro dual serial motor controllers in a robotics application where a lot of small robots interact. I would like to be able to change the software in the PIC chip on the controller. I would take the Pic off the board and put a new (or re-use) PIC on.
Any one familiar with the code in the controller could tell me if there is room for an acceleration/deceleration routine? I need to reduce the overhead on the main processor. Although I am not that savy with a PIC it wouldn’t take me too long to get up to speed.

Hello,

I think what you want to do will be very difficult. There isn’t any room for it in our code (which we generally don’t release), but our code was developed for the lowest-end PICs with very little stack and no interrupts. So, there’s a little bit of hope that you could do it with the more capable 12F629, but you still have to do the timing for two PWM channels and the asynchronous serial interface all in software.

You might be better off building your custom motor controller with the Baby Orangutan, which has the same motor driver as the micro dual serial motor controller. You can do it in C, and the mega48 is way more powerful than the 12F629.

- Jan

Not to mention that the mega48 can handle the PWM timing and asynchronous serial communication in hardware!

-Adam

Well I guess I thought I would save a bit of power usage ? I can’t seem to find the power specs on the baby Orangutan, anybody know?
Sorry I’m new to this site but am, in theory capable. I have been using the various Parallax controllers for quite a while, and came here because they also sell the micro motor control.
I own 8 of these controllers and that was another reason it would have been nice to just re-program them.
I don’t think I would have too hard of a time with the programming, I like those kind of challenges.
I think I will take a much closer look at the baby Orangutan now that I know how to spell it.