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2023-02-21 5:57 am
Hello everyone.
My name is Jim but I like to go by "Safetywrench" when I'm out in the either space. I have years of experience doing general aviation aircraft maintenance along with a MS degree in aviation safety ... so the internet name is appropriate.
I'm retired and have built myself an OpenBuilds 1515 CNC machine, I own an Ender 3S-1 3D printer, and I like to dabble in electronics using microcontrollers for various things.
In my teen years I was an armature radio buff and learned lots about electronics from that. Some of my early career jobs (1970's) involved me using the Z80 microprocessors in the photo processing automation industry and it's been a blast getting back to those roots. I'm slowly getting acquainted with Arduino, Raspberry Pi, C/C++, Python, and MicroPython.
My newest project is converting my CNC into a Large Scale 3D printer and designing an automated heater bed leveling system using 9 Pi Picos, stepper motors, thermistor ADC, heater pad controller using triacs, and I2C buss to communicate with a Raspberry Pi 4B I2C master controller.
I'm hoping someone on this forum might be able to guide me to/through using multiple Raspberry Pi Picos as I2C slave/controllers. I want them to receive bed leveling and temperature commands from a Raspberry Pi 4B. I want Pi Pico(s) to be able to switch from I2C slave to I2C master as needed so they can report their status to the Pi 4B when the parameters are met. The Pi Picos will need to control stepper motors, modulate power to their respective heater pads and continuously send bed temperature values back to the 4B over the I2C buss. Sounds complicated .... probably is but I'm retired and like a challenge.
I see from the Youtube channels that programming the Pi Pico as an I2C slave is problematic because there isn't a MicroPython library for that function (yet). That said, I'm looking to use 9 Pi Picos on a I2C buss; each individually able to switch between being an I2C slave or master. Any help would be much appreciated.
Okay ... that's a lot of info. Might be this topic needs to be posted somewhere else in the forum (just let me know); but I just wanted to introduce myself and my project.
Thanks in advance.
Glad to be here.
2023-02-21 2:41 pm
@safetywrench Welcome to the forum Bill Here in the ETHER we welcome your wealth of experience. As far as the PICO and I2C that is the first I am hearing of that, but in any case just use C. Yes, start your project discussion in the 'Project Corner' forum under either of the two sub-forum's of 'Help', or 'Show and Tell' for completed projects.
First computer 1959. Retired from my own computer company 2004.
Hardware - Expert in 1401, and 360, fairly knowledge in PC plus numerous MPU's and MCU's
Major Languages - Machine language, 360 Macro Assembler, Intel Assembler, PL/I and PL1, Pascal, Basic, C plus numerous job control and scripting languages.
Sure you can learn to be a programmer, it will take the same amount of time for me to learn to be a Doctor.