What is a miniboard?
The miniboard is the type of electronic board designed by professors Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Fred Martin and Randy Sargent. Its main purpose is to act as a robot controller and provide primary functional skills to different ad hoc proposals. Overall, the MIT miniboard is able to run the basic program and connect to other components without working much space in the device. Its overall design is based on previous attempts at the same idea, specifically on the board MIT 6.270.
Total miniboard specifications include the Motorola MC68HC11E2 processor with two kilobytes electrically deleted programmable memory only, which is a type of memory that cannot be deleted when the energy source is removed. In addition, the board is equipped with 256 bytes of random access to a set of chips, providing a system of storage of computer data to which the processor can be accessed. This allows the board to add a small number of variables to the program, allowing a robotic system to make adjustmentson the basis of external and internal stimuli. It is equipped with four outputs for direct current engines. In addition, there are two light-emitting diodes, one red and one green, located on the right side of the mini-wire board that provides information about the engine status.
Other features of the MIT miniboard include a number of eight analog and digital converters that are able to transmit analog signals to digital numerical representations, especially useful in identifying the voltage size. It also has eight input/output pins (I/O) capable of working in both directions. It hangs a board on a peripheral device, such as a computer, if necessary, which means that reading and other controls can be suited. Eight other pins are also built into the board, either working as a secondary I/O or as an output capture, which provides different values about the status of robots such as time stamps. Miniboard can t on tAké connect to the speaker to create a range of beeps and squawks depending on programming.
Martin and Sargent built a miniboard together with their sister circuit album, Hanyboard to make it more efficient for students to experiment with robotic technology. The use of this proposal as a basis for the device allowed students to focus on other robot parameters, such as its overall purpose and solving expected variables. One of the first competitions that the professors founded was a vehicle for students who built LEGO® robots.