GriffinBot

The GriffinBot is an educational robot platform used in GVSU School of Engineering courses like EGR226. It comprises:

A commercial chassis known as the Traxster II
A "bottom-side" board comprising Atmel AT91SAMS256 ARM processor and Xilinx XC3S100E FPGA
A "top-side" board comprising potentiometers, LED's, switches, etc.
An MW2 board for student development.

Board Initialization

To program SAM-BA:
1. With power off, install jumper on bottom-side board at TST connector JP3.
2. Remove resistor R6 (connected to AT91SAM7S256 pin PA1).
3. Apply power and wait 10 seconds
4. Remove power
5. Reinstall resistor R6
6. Remove TST jumper
7. Apply power
8. Unlock the first two regions of FLASH using Sam_I_Am:
```
Sam_I_Am open /dev/ttyUSB0 , writew FFFFFF64 5A000004 , writew FFFFFF64 5A004004
```
9. Program the combined.hex file using Sam_I_Am:
```
Sam_I_Am open /dev/ttyUSB0 , flash combined.hex
```
10. Program the main.hex file using Sam_I_Am:
```
Sam_I_Am open /dev/ttyUSB0 , flash main.hex
```

Battery Charging

The 4 LED's on the top-side board indicate the charging status. They will only be lit when the robot is switched on. The batteries will still charge when the robot is off, but the LED's will not be lit. The table below indicates the charging status.

LED10	LED12	LED13	LED11	State
Red	Yellow	Green	Red	State
Off	Off	Off	Off	Not charging or robot is turned off
Off	Off	ON	Off	Fully charged
ON	Off	ON	Off	Fast charge
ON	Off	ON	ON	Top-off charge
On or Off	ON	ON	On or Off	Temperature limits exceeded
Off	ON	Off	Off	Voltage Fault

It is common to observe a Voltage Fault when the robot's motors turn on, as the voltage spikes created by the motors lead the battery charging circuitry to believe the battery voltages are too high. This condition can only be cleared by turning the robot off then back on.