Pioneer 3™ Operations Manual

Advanced Robot Control & Operations Software
BUZZER SOUNDS
Pioneer 3 robots have a piezo buzzer on the User Control Panel that aurally notifies you of
system conditions, such as low batteries or stalls. For stealthy operation, issue the
SOUNTOG command #92 with an argument of zero to mute the controller’s buzzer or
argument of one to re-enable it. (See also the SOUNDTOG FLASH parameter in the next
chapter to set its default state.)
The SAY command #15 lets you play your own sounds through the buzzer. The argument
consists of a length-specified string of duration,tone pair bytes. The duration is measured
in 20 millisecond increments.
A tone value of zero means silence (musical rest). The next 127 frequencies (1-127) are
the corresponding MIDI notes. The remaining tones are frequencies computed as:
Tone – 127 * 32
Meaning frequencies from 1 to 4096, in 32 Hz increments.
Except for the MIDI notes, you’ll just have to experiment with tones. Here is the sequence
that generates the ARCOS distress wail when the robot stalls or the batteries are low:
50,100,20,0,50,60,0
TCM2
The TCM2 accessory is an integrated inclinometer, magnetometer, thermometer, and
compass that attaches to one of the AUX serial ports of the ARCOS controller. When
attached and enabled, special TCM2 compass servers read and report the heading in
±2 degree increments as the compass byte in the standard SIP. Use the TCM2 command
45 to request additional information from the device in the form of the TCM2pac. See the
TCM2 Manual and supporting software that accompanies the device for details.
ONBOARD PC
Communication between the onboard PC and the robot controller is RS-232 serial
through the respective COM1 (Windows) or /dev/ttyS0 (Linux) and internal HOST ports.
Set the HostBaud FLASH communication rate to match the PC client-software’s serial
port rate.
The RI pin 9 on the HOST port initializes to low and goes high when the batteries
discharge to below the FLASH-set ShutdownVolts value. We use the genpowerd
software under Linux to detect that low-power signal and automatically shut down the
PC. Windows PCs are a bit more problematic.
The Windows genpowerd-like ups.exe program requires a dedicated serial port and
prefers to use the CTS line to indicate low power. Accordingly, we jumper the RI signal of
HOST COM1 to the CTS signal pin of the adjacent COM2 port of the onboard PC for the
feature. For convenience, the Versalogic VSBC8 PC found onboard most recent
Pioneers shares its 20-pin connector on the PC's motherboard with COM1 and COM2. So, to
implement Windows ups.exe-enabled low-power shutdown, we jumper pin 8 (COM1 RI) to
pin 16 (COM2 CTS) on that VSBC8 serial connector. Use a similar strategy for other
implementations; the UPS configuration dialog lets you select COM1-4.
Once the port is wired, start up Windows and, as Administrator, go to the
Start:Settings:Control Panel:Power Options dialog and select the UPS tab. Click
Select and in the UPS Selection dialog, select COM2 (or other) port, Generic
manufacturer, and Custom model. Then click Next.
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