A friend recently gave me this board that he had never used and didn't know anything about it. It had a USB to serial cable plugged into it with the driver software that I installed and it had a servo motor included. Question 1- is this a micro controller (i know it has something to do with servo motors but is it programmable?)? Question 2- if this is programmable how can i program it (what language, what tools) and if so can i UNPLUG it from the computer and still have it run (flash memory or something like that) And last, does this have inputs (digital, analog) so I can perform actions based on the inputs? i notice some pins in the middle that don't look like they are for servos.
Answer
The SSC-32 is a dedicated servomotor controller with an embedded microcontroller in it, the ATmega168.
Answer 1: It has a microcontroller, and thus is a microcontroller board.
The microcontroller on this can be reprogrammed - ICSP pins are accessible on the board, though not in a convenient ICSP header. However, it comes preprogrammed with serial interface and servo control logic, changing the programming will eliminate the purpose of this board.
Answer 2: You can program it in C using AVR-GCC, or any of a host of other programming tools that support Atmel ATmega microcontrollers. You will also require a programmer device, one that supports ICSP.
Yes, the board can operate when unplugged from the computer, so long as an appropriate power source is provided to it. The microcontroller internally contains Flash memory, as well as RAM and EEPROM storage. See the datasheet linked above for details.
Last: The microcontroller does have both analog and digital input/output pins, but they may not all be conveniently broken out to pins on the board. So yes, if you sacrifice the Servo Controller function of the board, you can use it to perform actions based on inputs.
Those pins you notice in the middle are, in fact, input pins used by the default programming to trigger servo related functions.
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