New Brick Controller

I have been working on a new Brick Controller Design.  The intention is to upgrade the current design for

• TYPE-C interface
• More 9VDC power for the motors
• New LED controller for up to 10 LEDs
• BT Interface

Option add on board

• MP3 Player with audio amp
• USB Mass storage for storing the MP3 file.

After studying this  for a while, I became concerned that a PIC18F was not going to have the horsepower to do all of this.  Plus the latest Microchip libraries are pushing towards the PIC32.  So I started with a PIC32 development board, PIC32MX Curiosity and some Mikroe Click Boards.  First thing was tho get the development board to look like a USB MSD.  There was an example of this using a Click micro USB SD card.  This came up very easily and worked like it was supposed to.  But I didnt really want to put in an SD card when I only need about 5MB of storage for the MP3 file.

So I moved on to a Click Flash with a SST26VF064 on it.  This gives just under 8MB, which should be enough.  However the PIC32 Harmony framework only supports SST25 (now discontinued) on SPI. There is a SST26 driver for SQI.  However, the PIC32MX does not have inherent SQI.  Trying to get this working has been frustrating and from reading the forums, I am not alone.  I have the SST25 driver modified and I can see the correct initialization sequence on the scope, but reading has proven to be illusive.  I will say this, if I ever get this to work, I intend to post the project here so other people dont have to go through what I did.

New Year Starts

After taking a few months off to do other things, it is a new year and time to start working on the next set of new devices.

So what am I attempting to do   Most of the work revolves around USB Type C power delivery.  Building new USB power modules that use Type C connectors and thus can deliver more than the 5-7W of a typical USB connection. This also applies to the Brick Controller which will be able to deliver more power to the motors.

Here is a 3D model of the test prototype of the Type C power module.  From this design it looks like I will be able to maintain the 1.5 x 1.5 inch size of the previous modules.  This is the area contained inside the four mounting holes.  I have added a small PIC18F area(to the right) so that I can monitor the STUSB4500 during the test process,   In the end the configuration will be programmed into NVM on the IC and this wont be needed.

The other project is the new brick controller.  Besides adding Type C, I want to add an MP3 player and storage for music that appears as a USB drive, as an option.  With USB HID and MSD, MP3 and BTLE interface, a PIC18F is not going to make it.  So I am moving this design to a PIC32.  Some what of learning experience, since the Harmony Configurator is taking some time to get use to.  I am prototyping the design using a PIC32MX470 Curiosity development board for now.  With two expansion slots it should make it easier to do.  Here is a stock picture of the development board.