So some progress, parts showed up and I have them working on the bread board. I got the TCA9548A and VCNL4010 break out boards from Adafuit. These will be the basis of the robot sensor system.

You can see the 3 VCNL4010's on the right there. Currently, I only have one working through the i2c multiplexer.

The VCNL4010's are an ambient light and infrared proximity sensor all in one package. They sport a i2c interface for control and their infrared LED on board. They measure to 20 cm and have a interrupt line that can be configured to go off when the sensor measures under a certain threshold.

My plan is to mount 3 4010's around the front and sides for collision avoidance. I will have to mount the PCBs at a right angle to the main board. I will use solder joints to mount them. This will lose me quite a bit of board, but it's the only way I can see to make it work.

Unfortunately the 4010's only have one address. To make use of 3 of them I will have to use a i2c bus multiplexer in the form of TCA9546A. This is a 1 to 4 multiplexer that is very simple. It has a single configuration register that you set the bits for which i2c buses are on. I got the TCA9548A break out, which is very similar but with 8 buses instead of 4. I will use the TCA9546A on the final robot for space saving.

The i2c bus on the breadboard has gotten a lot longer and more roundabout. This meant the wave forms got very rounded, I had to reduce the pull-up resistors to 2.2K to get the wave form back to something more normal.

My current config of the LPC810 is using the reset pin as the SDA line. This is nice and it gives me a serial out and SWD debugging, but is annoying as I have to yank the battery to get into programming mode. For the final robot I had hoped to keep the reset pin and dump the serial connection at run time. But that mean switching two lines from i2c lines with pull-ups to the serial connection for programming. I have to also pull pin 5 to low at startup to enter the ROM based ISP.

I was thinking that a 4pdt switch would work, but none were small enough. Then I stumbled across signal line multiplexers and they seemed the ticket. I ( relatively randomly) chose the 74CBTLV3257 from NXP. This looks like it should be small enough without affecting the i2c or serial signals.

I am toying with adding a BNO055 IMU. This is an interesting chip that is a IMU with a cortex M0+ on board. The M0 does the sensor fusion for you. You just read off the final position. If I can get it to fit, I think I will use one. Since it will allow straight line driving from a tank drive robot. Adafruit has a breakout, which is convenient.

So more parts to order, with more break outs. I have started the circuit board design, not much yet beyond the main IC's. I use Upverter as my tool of choice, so you will be able to follow along as I stumble along. :-D If you have any feedback on the design feel free to give feedback. The link to the project is here.