I am currently working on a robotic arm and am juggling between the Vex 393 2 wire motor and the 3-wire servo.
With the motor I would need to purchase the motor controller 29 and the integrated encoder module.
I was curious if this Integrated Encoder Module will work with arduino
Theoretically yes. You would have to write you own I2C driver for the Arduino to support the IME, however, this is not trivial if you have not written low level I2C firmware before.
It is probably a herculean task but here is a write up of someone integrating I2C sensors.
To use the Vex I2C, the message structure would have to be interpreted to the Arduino.
Looks like it includes the wire library for managing the I2C.
Not easy nor for the faint of heart…
So obviously the WIRE library will be a must.
Ironically just a few days ago I made an Arduino library for using the vex ultrasonic sensors.
GitHub - gftabor/Ultrasonic-Library (I super stole the licensing line by line from Jpearman so its possible I accidentally left a reference to him in there.)
I am pretty sure WPI has a library already for using the VEX integrated encoder modules with Arduino. I will ask around and if they don’t I might just throw something together.
So I asked around
Person who recommended it said that originally it only had support for 1 sensor and that it might do more now.
The issue is that the I2C address for each sensor is by default the same so it is hard to distinguish sensors.
Doesn’t the cortex communicate back to each sensor at initialization handshaking to address each of them in the daisy chain differently?
Ah yes, here is the awesome thread by who else? jpearman!
This is JVN’s explanation of what is going on in the handshake
[VEX I2C Integrated motor Encoder Device Spec - OFFICIAL Tech Support - VEX Forum
](VEX I2C Integrated motor Encoder Device Spec - OFFICIAL Tech Support - VEX Forum)