The Handy Board is based on the 52-pin Motorola MC68HC11 processor, and includes 32K of battery-backed static RAM, four outputs for DC motors, a connector system that allows active sensors to be individually plugged into the board, an LCD screen, and an integrated, rechargable battery pack. This design is ideal for experimental robotics project, but the Handy Board can serve any number of embedded control applications.
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- Does the Handy Board have any digital outputs?
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- I’m measuring the voltage on my adapter, and it says 18 volts. Is this normal?
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- The R11 on my Interface/Charger board is smoking hot and is turning black!
- What are the specifications of the Handy Board’s DC adapter?
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- What kind of RJ11 cable do I use to connect from my Serial Interface Board to the Handy Board?
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I’m trying to get a handyboard v1.2k to work. I have a 24 pin parallel port (male) that I’m trying to connect to a modern computer. I have a parallel to 9 pin converter hooked to a 9 pin to a usb port on the computer, but the computer will not recognize the device. I’m working with Interactive C v 8.0.2 on a Windows Vista computer. Do you have any advice? In IC the interface keeps asking for a COM port, but none shows up on computer.
Jennifer, you can’t use a parallel adapter. You have to get a USB-serial cable, which provides a COM port. You then use a serial DB25-DB9 adapter to connect from the USB-serial cable to the Handy Board serial interface. Interactive C will be able to talk to the board using the USB-serial COM port.
I am trying to use an external power supply to run my DC motors, I found the instructions for using a second power supply for the HandyBoard (http://www.handyboard.com/oldhb/mods/hbmcut.html). I also have an expansion board on my Handy Board, The expansion Board uses these same headers. I also found some documentation on how to modify the expansion board to accept external power for the servo motors (back of expansion board identifies the trace to be cut). If I were to add an external power supply source of 24 volts would I need to cut both of these traces? Would I be correct in assuming that the servo and dc motors would both run on the same external source?
Yes, you would need to cut traces on both the main HB and the Expansion board. Also, you’d want to separate the servo power source, because servos should not be run on more than 6v. There is a diode chain on the Exp Bd to drop the servo voltage from 9 to 6v, but if you’re putting in 24v, you’d burn out servos. You could remove a diode and use the exposed pad as a place to run a 5v or 6v servo supply.