I had a few questions I’d like to ask about the orangutan… Specifically the “Orangutan robot controller mega168” (as that’s what I would buy if I where to buy one). I’m looking into buying one for a specific application. Basically, I was wondering if the Orangutan could do the following things:
Drive a servo(I’m pretty confident it can do this, but I’m just putting it out there to be sure)
Drive a 7.2V-8.4V motor (from what I can understand, this should be easy too)
Receive serial input (this is the hard part, it has to be controlled from a computer, and I know that the serial input would have to be stepped down from RS-232 levels)
The Orangutan’s ATmega168 microcontroller is definitely powerful enough to be able to generate standard RC hobby servo pulses, though the Orangutan’s regulated power bus will most likely not be able to deliver the current your servo will draw (the regulator can only supply 100 mA total). You can generate the control signals using one of the Orangutan’s I/O lines, but you will need to power the servo from a separate power supply.
The Orangutan can deliver up to 10 V (its maximum operating voltage) to its motor drivers, but it might not be able to deliver the required current for your motor. What is its stall current?
The ATmega168 has a hardware UART that will let you perform logic-level (TTL) serial communication, and its I/O pins can source/sink enough current (up to 40 mA) to drive LEDs directly (just make sure you use current-limiting resistors in series with your LEDs). Orangutan-lib provides library support for serial communication on the Orangutan.
The compiler (GCC) and programming software (avrdude) are both freely available for linux and probably included in the package manager for your distribution. Drivers for the Orangutan USB programmer are included with recent versions of the linux kernel.
