Pmod NAV and Joystick from Digilent

Digilent makes a variety of Pmod boards, and I had the opportunity to work with two of them: the NAV and the JSTK2. The NAV uses the LSM9DS1 3-axis accelerometer, 3-axis gyroscope, 3-axis magnetometer, plus the LPS25HB digital barometer. That’s 10 different pieces of data that you can access and use.

Digilent's Pmod NAV and Joystick

While the NAV has all the sensors, the JSTK2 can be used to control your project. It has a 2-axis joystick with a center button and trigger button. It also comes with a programmable RGB LED capable of 24-bit color. You can use the joystick and buttons as inputs while using the RGB LED for visual feedback.

In the example code, they list which MCU Digilent boards they were designed for. If you pair these Pmods with the Digilent boards then you can have these boards up and running within minutes (unless you’re like me and forget to switch on the main power to the board).

Working with the Pmod boards was a great way for me to experience SPI communication for the first time, especially with the joystick board. It has some great documentation and was fairly easy to migrate it over to an Arduino board, which is what I’m much more familiar with. I wanted to keep my code very basic and easy to understand to make it easier to manipulate. You could use the JSTK2 to control a robot and the NAV to add some autonomous features.

You can see me get these two parts up and running in my video blog post about these parts.

All of my code along with a much more detailed breakdown can be found on EEWiki, and I’ll be able to answer any questions on the TechForum.