Hans Jørgen Grimstad's Overlord Is a Quick-Start Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5 Robotics Controller
"This board was designed for simplicity and ease of use," its creator says, with support for CyberGear and DYNAMIXEL motors.
Developer and engineer Hans Jørgen Grimstad has released a compact carrier board for robotics projects, powered by the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5 (CM5) and designed for easy integration with Xiaomi CyberGear and ROBOTIS DYNAMIXEL motors: Overlord.
"'Overlord' is a carrier board for the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5," Grimstad explains of his creation. "The board facilitates easy integration with Xiaomi CyberGear motors and half duplex DYNAMIXELs, like the AX-12A, MX-12W servos. The carrier board has an onboard can controller, CAN transceiver, a nine-axis IMU [Inertial Measurement Unit] with 100Hz sensor fusion, half duplex line driver circuitry for DYNAMIXEL servos and has an acceptable power input range from 5 to 36V."
The open-hardware carrier board is designed to accept the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5 —the computer-on-module offshoot of the popular Raspberry Pi 5 single-board computer, powered by the same Broadcom BCM2712 system-on-chip — at the center then bring out wired Ethernet, USB, and robotics-specific connectivity.
"This board was designed for simplicity and ease of use with the primary goal being actuator control and balancing," Grimstad notes. "Apart from the onboard IMU, there is no sensing or GPIO [General-Purpose Input/Output] access. It is however possible to directly connect the board to another [Raspberry] Pi or any other board that supports auto-MDI-X directly using a standard Ethernet cable. Access to GPIO, camera, etc. can then be implemented via a simple TCP client/server."
Grimstad has published source code and design files, including examples of CyberGear, DYNAMIXEL, and IMU use, on GitHub under the reciprocal GNU General Public License 3 and the strongly reciprocal variant of the CERN Open Hardware License 2 respectively. "For companies or individuals who wish to use this project in a closed-source product, or do not wish to comply with the terms of the open source licenses," Grimstad notes, "a commercial license is available."