I would like to be able to use the micro maestro servo controller to communicate with a ColorPAL. Since, apparently, the micro maestro cannot use the TTL TX and RX lines to talk back and forth with the ColorPAL it seems as though the only option is to use the signal line and somehow bit shift instructions to and from the ColorPAL. The ColorPAL itself does not have a great deal of documentation, so this seems pretty difficult. First off I just want to see if I can tell the ColorPAL to 1) turn on a color using the maestro and 2) detect a color by sending to the maestro. Has anyone attempted something like this before? I’m not even sure how I could get the baud rate right coming from the maestro such that the ColorPAL thinks something is talking to it.
Help on any of these issues would be much appreciated.
I am 99.9% sure that it is impossible, and I have never heard of anyone attempting to do it. The ColorPAL uses a one-wire serial protocol with a baud rate of at least 2400, which is more than the Maestro is capable of in several ways. You are going to need a separate microcontroller communicate with the ColorPAL.
Ah, darn, I was afraid that might be the case. Maybe I’ll just reprogram the attiny on the colorpal to just use dac and adc that the maestro will be able to interpret.
I’ve been thinking about this a bit more, and I’m not quite sure how the attiny13a will be able to talk back to the micro maestro. While I’m sure the meastro would not be able to detect a pwm accurately, it should be possible to use delays every 50ms or so to look for an analog voltage, right? For example, if I wanted to say that Red corresponded to a pulse of 25 ms, the meastro could read in the analog start edge, delay 50ms and read the analog again to see if it is still on (i.e. it’s off then the color must be red, if it’s on the color is something else). Then do the same thing with Blue, and Green, by making them say 75ms and 125ms. I imagine something like this should be possible, correct? If so, potentially how quickly do you think I could accurately delay for pulse width checking?
