Interbotix Labs Robot Turret Manual
Introduction
The Interbotix Robot Turrets are a line of high performance Pan/Tilt units powered by the Arbotix
Robocontroller. These units ship with a default Comm_EXT firmware preloaded which has a basic serial
communication protocol & Instruction Set for controlling the Dynamixels, the DC motor controller, and
various I/O. The design intent is that the Robot Turret is to be operated via USB FTDI Cable or Xbee
Wireless tether to a PC, and are capable of sending sensory data back to said PC. A USB or Wifi Camera
can also be used to transmit video data back to the PC for machine vision applications. A Roborealm
software module has been designed to help facilitate this and communicates directly with the
Comm_EXT firmware instruction set. There is a GUI within Roborealm for controlling the Robot Turret,
as well as .NET based VB & C# demo applications available.
Advanced users may also create their own custom firmware for autonomous operation or other
applications. Documentation on custom programming the Arbotix is available on Vanadium Labs'
website. Please refer to our assembly guides for instructions on how to build particular model of Robot
Turret. Links to all documentation can be found on the Product Page.
Serial Port Communication
The Robot Turret Kit come with an FTDI Cable which is used for both USB Communication with a PC as
well as optional custom programming of the Arbotix. Please note that if you are using the FTDI Cable to
program your ArbotiX, you must enable the "Set RTS On Close" option in your
Device Manager >> USB
Serial Port Properties >> Port Settings Tab >> Advanced menu
. The ArbotiX also supports the use of Xbee
radios for wireless communication; more information on setting these up can be found in the Arbotix
Documentation.
