Feather & Wing Purchasing guidance

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LouHawthorne
 
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Feather & Wing Purchasing guidance

Post by LouHawthorne »

Hi guys - I’m working on a project where I need true high-res orientation (pitch and roll only) sent wirelessly from one Feather & Wing to another, over a distance of less than 10 feet. I need a suggestion for the Featherwing that will be detecting orientation. The receiving Feather will have the MusicMaker wing, which I’ve recently purchased and learned. Orientation will be announced by the receiving Feather & wing both with colored LEDs and audio files. I assume the protocol I want for both Feathers is Bluetooth, but I see multiple options. I’d appreciate a recommendation for the pair of Bluetooth Feathers in addition to the orientation Featherwing. Thank you!

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dastels
 
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Re: Feather & Wing Purchasing guidance

Post by dastels »

What about a Feather nRF52840 Sense? https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-feather-sense

Dave

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LouHawthorne
 
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Re: Feather & Wing Purchasing guidance

Post by LouHawthorne »

Hi Dave – thanks for your reply! I like the idea of an integrated Feather/ Bluetooth / sensing platform. I couldn't find info on the orientation precision for the sensing portion of this Feather. We need a minimum of 0.1 degree for both pitch and roll under all environmental conditions. 0.01 degree would be better for more margin.

It looks like the most precise Featherwing that Adafruit offers for DoF sensing is the ISM330DHCX + LIS3MDL, described here:
https://www.adafruit.com/product/4569
What do you think of this? I see that it's on backorder but I won't need it for a month or so.

Lady Ada mentioned in the video above that this DoF Featherwing needs a Cortex M0 or M4 Feather for optimal processing speed (w/HW Floating Point I assume). I found two with these processors that also have BLE:
1) nRF52840 Express, which has a Cortex M4F processor (https://www.adafruit.com/product/4062); and
2) nRF52 Bluefruit (https://www.adafruit.com/product/3406). This seems to be bit more advanced than the other board.

Do you concur that these are good choices for send & receive of DoF data generated by the Featherwing above?

One final question: Can these BLE boards be programmed to link together on power-up or will I need to link them manually by some process each time I power up the system?

Thanks again,
Lou

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dastels
 
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Re: Feather & Wing Purchasing guidance

Post by dastels »

The nRF52840 is a newer, and more advanced chip so that would be my choice over the nRF52832 based Feather. TRhe 52840 does have hardware floating point.

The ISM chip's gyro does have up to +/-4000 degrees per second sensitivity whereas the LSM chip's only has to 2000 so the Feather+Wing will give you a bit more to work with.

As for the auto-linking, that's beyond my BLE knowledge level. It'd be a good question for the Wireless forum: viewforum.php?f=53

Dave

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LouHawthorne
 
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Re: Feather & Wing Purchasing guidance

Post by LouHawthorne »

Thanks again Dave. I'll take my auto-linking question to the wireless forum now.

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