rs872/ece-minibot-communication

ece-minibot-communication

Code for UART communication between the Pi and Arduino

Use

A few things must first be configured on the Pi.

1. Clone this repository
2. Link this repository to directory cs-minibot using command "ln -s ~/ece-minibot-communication ~/cs-minibot"
3. Enable UART in system options
4. Remove line "console=serial0,115200" from /boot/cmdline.txt

The Arduino does not require special configuration, simply program it with arduino/main/main.ino

Performance

Performance had been characterized using a Python script which times 10,000 performances of each GPIO command. The results using a baud rate of 1MHz are as follows:

Command	Total time (s)	Time per command (ms)
digitalWrite	3.528	0.353
analogWrite	3.558	0.356
digitalRead	9.604	0.960
analogRead	9.991	0.999
motorDrive	3.786	0.379

Write commands require an average of ~0.4 ms, while read commands require an average of ~1 ms. The best apparent potential action to improve performance is finding better serial libraries for either of the Pi or Arduino.