• Author Author: rscasny
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What Would You do with this MicroPython Single Board Computer and What Would You Need to Do it?

rscasny

I plan on roadtesting thw Trinamic TMCM-0960-MotionPy Single Board Computer at the end of February. Before I launched the roadtest page, I have asked for some community feedback ( Top Members  Top Members ) and I also wanted to get a conversation going with members who would be interested in roadtesting this board.

 

So, what do you think of this board? What are your thoughts about roadtesting it? Besides the board, what other things do you think would be helpful to roadtest or build something with this board?

 

As always, I appreciate the time and input you provide me to make the RoadTest program a success.

 

Here are the high points about the board:

 

The TMCM-0960-MotionPy board is an open-source single board computer running MicroPython. It comes with several communication interface options like CAN, RS485, UART, and separate GPIO headers. With a wide supply voltage range of +6...+50V and industrial Fieldbus interfaces it is the engineers’ swiss army knife for small automation applications. Plugging directly into the application for logging data on an SD card or updating subsystems without the need for additional tools, the module offers a total of 13 functions in Python programming language for ease of use.

ximage

I've attached the hardware manual.

 

Additional Information

Attachments:
imageTMCM-0960-MotionPy_HW_Manual_V10 (1) (1).pdf

  • I find the 6v to 50v supply interesting (likely has a built-in buck to provide the 3.3v for the microcontroller). A quick look at the hardware manual and example programs seem to indicate they designed the board for controlling actuators and motors (and logging).

     

    Maybe including a basic (stepper?) motor kit would work best? Or something that can take advantage of the 6v to 50v supply voltage. I'm not sure if the cable for the JST-PH (8 pins) is included in the kit, but that seems to be the only non-jumper type i/o connector there (aside from the usb-c port) so maybe including one would also be useful.

  • in reply to Gough Lui

    Trinamic has a bunch of motor controllers that use CANBUS, RS485 and USB. Presumably this would add some smarts to those products.

    Perhaps one of those would be a better pairing than an arduino shield.

  • I normally associate Trinamic with motor control stuff, which is why I was a bit confused with this board (where does the motor go?) since it's actually more of a MicroPython-enabled STM32F405RGT6 microcontroller interfacing to RS232, RS485 or CAN fieldbuses.

    image

    Would be a great choice if you wanted to say log stuff off the CAN bus to a microSD card (which goes near the bottom, connector just covering the pins!) for later debugging, or as a go-between to interface to other boards which might speak UART, SPI or I2C for actuating a response from other Trinamic evaluation kits (via PyTrinamic). Seems like a good board to have around even if just to interface to the buses over USB although I don't have any RS485 or CAN applications to speak of at the moment ...

     

    - Gough

  • I like to see a RoadTest that exercised the card options. How many of the interfaces are out of the box usable or would require something else to work. "Plugging directly into the application for logging data on an SD card or updating subsystems without the need for additional tools"

  • Interesting card - Cortex M4.

    It looks like it has an uSD card connector although the manual doesn't say much about it.

    I wonder if this Python can log data to the uSD card.

    It looks like  it might be a good candidate to add a GPS and display to turn it into an OBDII logger, but I would need more info before using it to tackle such an application.