As it stand I have built 10 model Battleships Aircraft carriers and Heavy cruisers… all of th filled to the brim with electronics, lights and servo motors, each ship has a Maestro r similar, all pololu and all controlling the turrets and heavier guns on the ships…
What I am trying to do is to tie them all in together now, they are on a special cabinet, across the other side of the room, and my raspberry pies are here with me… all i would really like to know is if I have all ten ships connected to a USB hub, and the wires run from one end of the shed to the other, and I can sit in my seat to control the ships… is it possible., does the Pi need any specific software?..
Hello.
That sounds like a really neat project; if you are willing to post more about it in the “Share your projects” section of the forum, we would love to see it in action!
As far as controlling the Maestro, our Maestro Control Center software does not work on the Raspberry Pi. You might be able to get the UscCmd command line utility to work if you use the Maestro’s Linux software download and follow the instructions in the README.txt. Alternatively, you might try looking at some of the examples in the “Related Resources” section of the Maestro user’s guide; there is plenty of example code you could use for controlling a Maestro from a Raspberry Pi.
It sounds like you are planning on connecting them all through USB, but you might also consider using the Maestro’s TTL serial interface. This would allow you to daisy chain multiple Maestros on a single serial line. You can find more information about this in the “Daisy Chaining” section of the Maestro user’s guide.
Please note we recommend using a Windows or a Linux PC to initially configure the Maestro (e.g. you will need to change its serial mode to something other than the default which is “UART, detect baud rate”). You could do this with UscCmd but it is a lot easier to do through the Maestro Control Center software.
Brandon
