Makeblock mCore Information

Overview

mCore board

The great folks over at Makeblock have created a nice little board for creating robots, the mCore.

The mCore is basically an Arduino Uno plus

• dual motor controller
• two serial RGB LEDs (WS2812 aka "NeoPixels")
• piezo buzzer
• light sensor
• IR LED
• IR receiver
• button
• header block for either a bluetooth or 2.4GHz radio
• four RJ25 connectors for external peripherals

The board is intended to be used for teaching programming, robotics, internet of things, etc.  As a learning tool, it is primarily used with the custom version of the Scratch programming environment called mBlock.  There is also a library for regular Arduino IDE programming as well.

What is lacking, however, is a good write up on the various pin assignments used for the on-board peripherals that Makeblock added.  Thankfully, at least there is a schematic to help us out.

Pin assignments

Based on the schematic, here are the pin assignments.  Additional detail on each peripheral is provided below the table.

Arduino mCore pin assignments

D0/RXD	RXD on external radio connector
D1/TXD	TXD on external radio connector
D2	IR receiver input
D3~	IR LED output (HIGH = ON)
D4	M2 direction (HIGH = CCW)
D5~	M2 PWM (speed)
D6~	M1 PWM (speed)
D7	M1 direction (HIGH = CW)
D8	Buzzer output
D9~	Pin 5 on RJ25 #2
D10~ (SPI) SS	Pin 6 on RJ25 #2
D11~ (SPI) MOSI	Pin 5 on RJ25 #1
D12 (SPI) MISO	Pin 6 on RJ25 #1
D13 (SPI) SCLK	Blue LED / Serial out to WS2812 LEDs
A0	Pin 5 on RJ25 #4
A1	Pin 6 on RJ25 #4
A2	Pin 5 on RJ25 #3
A3	Pin 6 on RJ25 #3
A4 (I2C) SDA	Pin 2 on all 4 RJ25 connectors
A5 (I2C) SCL	Pin 1 on all 4 RJ25 connectors
A6	Light sensor input
A7	Button input, low when pressed
Arduino Pin	mCore function

Motor Controller

Motor Controller

The Toshiba TB6612 is used as a dual channel motor controller.  The inputs to the controller for each motor are a PWM pin for speed and two direction pins.  The mCore designers simplified the interface such that a single Arduino digital pin controls direction (it is inverted in hardware to provide the second direction input to the motor controller) while a second PWM pin controls speed.

The M1 connector on the board is controlled by D6 (PWM speed) and D7 (direction).  When D7 is HIGH, the motor turns CW.  When D7 is LOW the motor turns CCW.

Likewise, the M2 connector is controlled by D5 (PWM speed) and D4 (direction).  However, in this case the function of D4 is reversed. When D4 is HIGH the motor turns CCW, and when it is LOW it turns CW.

Reversing the function of the two direction pins may seem odd, however, when you think about it, the motors are generally on the opposite sides of the robot so they need to turn opposite directions for the bot to move either forward or backward.  Consequently you can use the same 'direction' setting (HIGH or LOW) on both outputs to get the bot to go in one direction, for example, forward.

Serial RGB LEDs (WS2812 aka NeoPixels)

WS2812 Serial RGB LEDs

There are two WS2812 RGB LEDs on the board.  These share a pin (digital pin 13) with the traditional LED seen on most Arduino boards.  You can use any of the existing NeoPixel libraries to control these LEDs.

In addition, the pin (D13) controls a blue LED on the board so the standard Arduino blink sketch will work correctly on the mCore.

Piezo Buzzer / Speaker

Speaker

 The speaker is connected to digital pin 8.  You can drive this pin using the standard Arduino tone() library call.

Light Sensor

Photocell

The light sensor is a standard CdS photocell configured as a voltage divider.  This is hooked to analog pin 5 so you can read the voltage (and hence the amount of light) using analogRead().

IR LED

IR LED

The IR LED is simply hooked to a digital output pin (digital pin 3). You can use this to transmit data or to detect objects in front of the bot (by bouncing light off of objects and reading it with the receiver).

IR Receiver

IR Receiver

The IR receiver, on digital pin 2, is intended to be used with the included remote control. It can also be used in conjunction with the IR LED for communications between bots.  The Makeblock library includes routines to read the button presses from the remote.

Button

Pushbutton

This is just a basic pushbutton with a pull-up resistor hooked to analog pin 7.  When the button is pressed, the value on A7 will be low.  It can be used to start your program or pretty much any other function you program in.  Unfortunately the designers wasted an analog input with just one button.  They could have included more buttons on the same pin by simply creating a voltage divider network with each of the buttons having a different resistor (and thus a different voltage / value when reading A7).

Radio Headers

Radio headers

The bot comes with either a bluetooth or 2.4GHz radio. This is the connector for the radio.  The design allows the radio to communicate using the standard Arduino Serial() calls.

RJ25 Connectors

RJ25 Connectors

The four RJ25 connectors make it easy to connect a variety of peripherals to the mCore. The top of each connector has a color coded block to indicate the types of peripheral that can be attached.  In turn, the peripherals themselves have color coded connectors.  Hooking things up is as easy as matching the colors.
Each connector has power (+5) and ground connections along with the I2C bus clock and data pins.  The remaining two pins on each connector have either two digital or two analog port pins, depending on which connector it is.
Port 1 has digital pins 11 (PWM) & 12.  Port 2 has digital pins 9 & 10 (both PWM).  Port 3 has analog pins 2 & 3.  Port 4 has analog pins 0 and 1.

Internet sales tax

Internet sales tax just makes no sense.  It is simply another version of interstate sales tax which also makes no sense.  The simple solution is to pay sales tax where an item is sold (it is called "Sales Tax" after all) and be done with it.

Let's look at the edge cases which are often instructive in revealing issues and problems.

1. Let's say you are traveling outside your home state and you have a flat tire.  You buy a new tire, paying sales tax in the jurisdiction where you purchase the tire, and drive home.  Do you now owe additional tax to your home state for that product (the tire) you brought into the state?  If so, haven't you been double taxed?

2. Now let's look at the exact same transaction slightly differently.  What if I live in another state and I'm now in the process of moving to my new state. During the trip, while still in my previous state of residence, I have a flat tire.  I buy a new tire in my old state and then drive across the line into my new state.  Do I owe sales tax to my new state of residence?  How is this any different than the example above?  What if I bought new tires a day (or a week, a month, a year) before I moved?  Does that change the answer?

3. What if I buy a burger at a fast food restaurant just over the state line on my way home?  Do I owe tax to my home state when I get back?  Does it matter if I consume the burger before or after I cross the state line?  What if I stay out of state for several days (thus the food is consumed, processed, and completely 'used' out of state)?

4. Do I owe sales tax to my home state on gasoline that I purchase during a trip to another state? What if I bought that gas just before crossing the line into my home state?  What if all of the gas is used in the other state?  What if only 1/2 the gas is used outside the state; do I owe sales tax on only the 1/2 I brought back?  What if that gas is only used in a rental car that stays entirely in the other state?

5. What if, during a car trip in another state, I have my oil changed and I bring that new oil back into my home state (in my crankcase)?  Would it be any different if I bought a case of oil in another state and brought it home to change my own oil?  Do I have to pay sales tax to my home state on both the oil and the service or only on the oil portion of the transaction?  What if my home state doesn't tax services, only tangible products?  What if I drove 2000 miles (of the 3000 before I need another oil change) out of state; would I only owe on 1/3 of the cost?

6. What if I purchase a service in another state (say a massage or a car wash)?  Do I owe tax on the service that was entirely performed in the other state?  What if my state doesn't tax services?

7. Let's say my home state doesn't tax a particular class of item (food for example).  If I buy that item in another state do I still owe sales tax to my home state for the out-of-state transaction? If the other state does tax that class of item am I owed a refund from my home state (turn about is fair play, right)?

8. Compare this to adjacent cities with different tax rates.  Do I owe sales tax to my home city if I buy something in the next town over?

There are numerous other edge cases as I'm sure you can see.  These cases make it clear that interstate sales tax just makes no sense whatsoever.  There are an equal number of edge cases that apply to internet sales tax which is really no different.

In addition, there is no way to get 'credit' for the taxes you did pay at the point of sale.  Thus, any interstate taxes you pay constitute double taxation which is also unfair.

The argument made by proponents of this scheme is that the transaction takes place "at" the user's browser & therefore in the user's home state. If that's true, doesn't every internet merchant need a business license in each city? That's only fair, right? They have a sales presence in each home, right? Of course that's just ridiculous. As ridiculous as internet sales tax.

The basic concept of sales tax is to pay for the costs of doing business in that area (infrastructure, police, fire, building inspector, etc.).  Since you are using none of those infrastructure bits in your home state when you buy something out of state, it makes no sense to pay tax to your home state. Further, the state, county, & city that actually did pay for the infrastructure supporting your transaction got paid nothing. Not to mention that your home county & city get no tax revenue, just the state.