NOTE - Open source* Robotics AI control and development board. Speeduino compatible for full engine / vehicle management. Used for compact space craft control of sub systems. Ideal for AI interfacing to robotics such as Groot N1.
VEGA, is Mission Systems compact development board meant for a host of applications incudling robotic AI interface controls, engine management, vehicle management, space craft management, as well as thousands of other applications without the need for excessive engineering of complex electronic sub systems.
With a compact 4.5 x 3.5 inch footprint, it can run most open source Arduino, Teensy or C++ libraries and includes dual CPU for fallback or secondary safety monitoring.
*Dual CPU not available with Arduino compatibility
SYSTEM CAPABILITIES
PYTHON, C++, Arduino, and NXP Development Code capable with it's dual ARM microprocessors.
Interface all main, or sub systems with serial, I2C, CAN, Ethernet, USB and other protocols.
Music playback, audio playback, multiple digital HMI interfaces, communicate accross a broad range of protocols, display outputs in full color display with touch sensing inputs, run actuators, servo motors with onboard servo controller, turn on lights, read analogue inputs, measure voltages, several analogue and high power PWM outputs, 5 volt tolerant, on board hall effect circuits, onboard high power MOSFETs
AI Assistant board, and currently used on spacecraft for custom RCS and actuator control.
AI "higher mind" daughter board for audio output. Hand shake, and control of external drives, actuators, and sensors for robotics.
Includes USB, I2C, Ethernet, Serial, and Can Bus communication protocols. Easily integrate WIFI, Bluetooth and other protocols.
BULLET FEATURES
- Up to 24vdc electronic system tolerance
- Float point math unit, 32 bits only
- 1024 Flash, 256K RAM, 4K EEPROM
- USB device 12 Mbit/sec, USB host 480 Mbit/sec
- 64 digital input/output pins with x16 5V tolerant, 22 PWM output pins with x4 1 ampere drivers, x4 19 ampere drivers, hal sensor, and x4 regulated 5V PWM outputs
- 25 analog input pins, 2 analog output pins, 11 capacitive sense pins
- 6 serial, 3 SPI, 4 I2C ports
- 1 I2S/TDM digital audio port
- 2 CAN bus
- 1 SDIO (4 bit) native SD Card port
- 32 general purpose DMA channels
- Cryptographic Acceleration & Random Number Generator
- RTC for date/time
- Full 94 pin example pinout here VEGA FULL PINOUT
PROCESSOR 1
Performance
- Up to 120 MHz ARM Cortex with DSP instructions and Single Precision Floating Point unit
System and Clocks
- Multiple low-power modes to provide power optimization based on application requirements
- Memory protection unit with multi-master protection
- 3 to 32 MHz main crystal oscillator
- 32 kHz low power crystal oscillator
- 48 MHz internal reference
Security
- Hardware random-number generator
- Supports DES, AES, SHA accelerator
- flash security
Timers
- Four Periodic interrupt timers
- 16-bit low-power timer
- Two 16-bit low-power timer PWM modules
- Two 8-channel motor control/general purpose/PWM timers
- Two 2-ch quad decoder/general purpose timers
- RTC
Human-machine interface
- Low-power hardware touch sensor interface with GPIO
Memories and memory expansion
- Up to 1 MB program flash memory and 256 KB of
- SD card Interface
- FlexBus external bus interface and SDRAM controller
Analog modules
- Two 16-bit SAR ADCs and two 12-bit DAC
- Four analog comparators containing a 6-bit
DAC and programmable input
- Voltage reference 1.2V and 12V
Communication interfaces
- Ethernet controller with hardware IEEE 1588 capability
- USB high speed transceiver
- USB full-/low-speed OTG with on-chip transceiver
- Low Power Universal Asynchronous Receiver Transmitter 0 and five standard UARTs
- Secure Digital Host Controller
PROCESSOR 2
Performance
- 48 MHz ARM Cortex
Memories and memory interfaces
- Up to 32 KB program flash memory
- Up to 4 KB SRAM
System peripherals
- Nine low-power modes to provide power optimization based on application requirements
- Software watchdog
- 4-channel DMA controller, supporting up to 63 request sources
- wakeup unit
- SWD debug interface and Micro Trace Buffer
- Bit Manipulation Engine
Clocks
- 32 kHz to 40 kHz or 3 MHz to 32 MHz crystal oscillator
- Multi-purpose clock source
- 1 kHz LPO clock
Human-machine interface
- 41 general-purpose input/output (GPIO)
Communication interfaces
- 8-bit SPI module
- low power UART module
- I2C module
Analog Modules
- 12-bit SAR ADC
- Analog comparator containing a 6-bit DAC w/ reference input
Timers
- Six channel Timer/PWM
- One 2-channel Timer/PWM module
- Periodic interrupt timers
- 16-bit low-power timer
- Real time clock
Security and integrity modules
- 80-bit unique identification number per chip
BOARD DESIGN
- HIGH EMI/EMC Tolerance layout
- FR4 190 degree, mil spec
- 2oz Layer traces
SPECIAL FEATURES
Nested Interrupt Controller
Priority nesting allows low latency for critical interrupts while lower priority interrupts are in use. Libraries can utilize interrupt nesting with priority level defaults allowing many types of libraries to work well when used together.
Direct Memory Access (DMA)
General purpose 16 channel DMA controller. Optimized Audio, LED and display libraries make uses of these DMA channels. A DMAChannel.h abstraction layer is available. The USB device, USB host, SD card and Ethernet peripherals also have specialized DMA engines.
Random Number Generator
True random number hardware is capable of generating random data at (TBD) rate. The Entropy library is used to access the random number generator.
Cryptographic Acceleration
Hardware support for symetric ciphers (AES, DES) and one-way hash (MD5, SHA1, SHA256) is available. Libraries are available for this function.
Temperature Sensor
A built in temperature sensor allows reading the temperature inside the main chip. Libraries available.
MEMORY
Program / Flash Memory
Standard version 512 kbyte memory to 2 megabytes of flash memory intended for storing code. The flash memory can also store read-only variables and arrays.
RAM
256K / 512K of memory is available for variables and data. Functions may also be placed in RAM using the FASTRUN keyword.
EEPROM
4096 bytes of emulated EEPROM memory is supported. Special FlexNVM hardware allows this memory to be written without disruption to normal flash memory. Libaries are available for the EEPROM which is typically used to access this memory. AVR libc functions may also be used.
RTC RAM
32 bytes of memory are located within the RTC. If a coin cell is connected to VBAT, contents of this memory is preserved while power is off. The last 4 bytes are used by startup code to manage configuration of data/time, leaving 28 bytes available for general use.
SD Card
A built in SD socket allows you to use SD cards for large data storage. The Arduino SD library is used to access the card, using SD.begin(BUILTIN_SDCARD). This built in SD socket uses fast 4 bit native SDIO to access the card. SD cards may also be used via the SPI pins, with SD.begin(cspin), using the slower single bit SPI protocol to access the card.
SPI Flash
Flash memory chips may be added using the SPI pins. These are supported by the SerialFlash and LittleFS libraries.
COMMUNICATIONS AND PERHIPRIAL SUPPORT
USB Device
Superduino primary communication is its main USB port, which operatates in USB device / peripheral mode at 12 Mbit/sec speed. The Superduino software supports many different types of USB communication to your PC or Mac. Several of these devices types may be used simultaneously.
Serial - Seen by your computer as a COM port (Windows) or serial device (Mac, Linux), Serial is the default and most commonly used communication type. Bytes are transfered in both directions at maximum USB speed (baud rate settings are ignored). While normally used with the Arduino Serial Monitor, Vega can utilize USB Serial modes compatible with software designed for serial ports, like CoolTerm.
Emulated Serial - The USB Type settings lacking Serial use a HID interface to emulate serial. In these modes, your PC or Mac will not detect a COM port or serial device, but you can still use Serial.print() to send text to the Arduino Serial Monitor.
MIDI Music - Musical Instrument Device. MIDI is often used to interface knobs, sliders and buttons to music & sound control software. MIDI messages may be sent in both directions. Superduinos MIDI is "class compliant" for compatibility with Macintosh, Linux, and Windows using only built-in drivers.
The MIDIx4 & MIDIx16 modes provide 4 or 16 virtual MIDI ports / cables. The MIDI device name seen by your computer may be customized.
Audio - Bi-directional stereo audio streaming, seen by your computer as a USB sound card. Using your computer's sound preferences, programs which play sound can stream to Vega, and programs which record or process sound can receive, as if you were using a USB microphone. USB Audio is meant to be used together with the Audio Library, allowing your computer's sound to integrate with any audio processing system you design.
Keyboard - Standard 104 key USB keyboard. Programs can transmit keystrokes to your computer, allowing control of nearly any software. Media control keys (play, pause, volume, etc) may also be used. Many non-US keyboard layouts are supported.)
Mouse - A special USB mouse is emulated. Both relative motion of a normal mouse, and absolute screen position similar to a digitizer pen can be sent to your computer. Mouse buttons and scroll wheel are also supported.
Joystick - A joystick / game controller with 6 axes (X, Y, Z, Zr, Slider1, Slider2), 32 buttons, and 1 hat switch are supported. The Joystick type is useful for controlling games or other software which responds to a joystick.
Touchscreen - Emulates a touchscreen capable of detecting up to 10 finger positions.
MTP Disk - Media Transfer, seen by your computer as a phone or camera which shares files.
Flight Sim - Allows integration with the X-Plane flight simulator software. Variables and controls within the simulator are linked to variables in your code running on Vega.
Raw HID - Allows communicating 64 byte messages with custom written software on your computer.
Serial
Serial ports allow you to connect serial devices, such as MIDI, GPS receivers, DMX lighting, ESP wireless modules, etc. All 6 serial port are fully independent and can transfer data simultaneously. None are shared with USB (as is done on some Arduino boards). Serial1 & Serial2 include FIFOs for better performance at high speed baud rates.
I2C
I2C (signals SDA & SCL) allow connecting a wide variety of chips which use I2C communication. Each I2C chip connected to the same SDA/SCL wires needs a unique address. I2C supports 100, 400, and 1000 kbit/sec speeds.
SPI
3 ports for SPI (signals MOSI, MISO, SCK) allow connecting higher speed chips, SD cards, and displays which use SPI communication. Libraries provide software support for SPI. The first SPI port features a FIFO for higher sustained speed transfers. Each SPI chip requires a chip select (CS) signal. Most libraries using SPI can use any digital pin. The SPI ports provide special hardware controlled CS pins, which are used by specially optimized libraries for higher performance.
CAN
CAN bus allow connecting to automotive & industrial control systems which use CAN communication. A CAN transceiver chip must be added to complete the electrical interface between Vega and the CAN bus.
DISPLAYS
ILI9341 320x240 Color TFT The best supported display for Vega
These displays are the best supported with multiple high performance libraries for fast updates speed. ILI9241 is usually the best display to use, due to superior software support.
ST7735 Color TFT
These displays are slightly smaller and lower resolution than ILI9341. Highly optimized libaries for ST7735 & ST7789 available.
SSD1306 Monochrome OLED
Small monochrome displays are very popular and well supported.
Other Displays
Most displays with Arduino libraries work on Vega.
AUDIO
Audio Design Tools makes it easy to create an audio processing system which streams sound while your program runs.
An Arduino Audio Shield converts I2S digital audio to analog stereo input & output.
I2S / TDM
Most commonly used with an audio shield, 1 digital audio port can simultaneously transmit and receive up to 4 audio channels using I2S protocol, or up to 16 channels using TDM. Alternately, a special format used by inexpensive PT8211 DAC chips can be used.
S/PDIF
The I2S port may be used to transmit S/PDIF. Receiving S/PDIF is not supported.
Analog Input (ADC)
1 or 2 analog input pins may be used for audio inputs. These may be used simultaneously with the other audio inputs & outputs.
Analog Output (DAC)
1 or 2 DAC outputs can transmit audio. These may be used simultaneously with the other audio inputs & outputs.
LIGHTS AND LEDS
WS2812B / NeoPixel
Two high performance non-blocking libraries support use of WS2812B LEDs allowing up to 8800 LEDs to be refreshed at up to 30 Hz video rate.
SmartMatrix & SmartLED Shield for HUB75 RGB LED Panels
Libraries available for basic graphics, create scrolling and static text, drawing patterns using FastLED, and play animated GIFs on the panel.
DMX Lighting Control
Serial1 & Serial2 may be used for efficient communication with DMX Lighting controllers.
RGB LEDs
Ordinary LEDs by be variable-brightness controlled by PWM or Software libraries with digital outputs.
POWER
VIN Pin
5-24V power may be applied to the VIN pin.
3.3V Power
Vega has a voltage regulator which reduces the 5V VUSB / VIN power to 3.3V for use by the main processor and most other parts. Additional circuitry may be powered from the 3.3V pin. The recommended maximum for external 3.3V usage is 500mA. When power is not applied to VUSB or VIN.
Low Power Features
Low power idle mode available with main processor MK64/66.
VBAT
A 3 volt coin cell may be connected to VBAT & GND to allow the RTC to keep track of date / time while power is off. A CR2032 type battery is recommended, though other 3V coin cells may also be used.
COMPLETE LIST OF PINOUTS (EXAMPLE SPEEDUINO APPLICATION)
*development board is custom designed to fit a large amount of applications. All programming libraries are open sourced such as Arduino, Teensy, Speeduino, and open source C++ coded libraries. Unit can be custom programmed to suit customer needs (programming not available through Mission Systems). System is meant for custom parties to exploit and integrate its full potential on a variety of projects for integration on their platforms.
