Controller Interface

Reference for the OctoMY™ controller abstraction layer that communicates with robot hardware.

Design Note

OctoMY™ ships with a single hardware controller — Fixo — that compiles your robot's actuator/sensor configuration into purpose-built firmware via embedded LLVM/Clang. The legacy ArduMY/Fluxo runtime-configurable path and the Servotor32 binding were removed in 2026 — Fixo replaces both.

Overview

The controller hardware stack in OctoMY™ is composed as follows:

The controller is implemented by the FixoController class in libfixo. Hardware variation (different Arduino boards, different actuators) is handled inside Fixo's firmware-generation pipeline rather than by swapping controller classes.

Controller feature areas

The controller supports the following feature areas:

The simplest configuration only uses a few actuators with no sensors or lobes. Sensors, lobes, and advanced features are all opt-in via the FixoPreset.

General interface

Controller identification

class FixoController {
public:
    // Identity
    QString controllerTitle() const;
    QString controllerDescription() const;
    QString controllerIcon() const;
    QString controllerVersion();
};

Debug mode

class FixoController {
public:
    bool isDebug();
    void setDebug(bool debug);
};

Configuration widget

class FixoController {
public:
    // UI for configuring this controller
    bool hasConfigurationWidget() const;
    QWidget* configurationWidget();
};

Serial interface

class FixoController {
public:
    bool usesSerial() const;
    void setSerialDevice(QSerialPort& port);
};

Configuration processing

class FixoController {
public:
    // Load/store internal configuration
    QVariantMap configuration();
    void setConfiguration(const QVariantMap& map);

signals:
    void configurationChanged();
};

Connection management

class FixoController {
public:
    void setConnected(bool connected);
    bool isConnected();
};

Controller handle subsystem

The controller handle subsystem adds per-actuator management:

Future features

Controller paradigm

OctoMY™ ships a single controller — Fixo — which compiles the hardware configuration into purpose-built firmware via embedded LLVM/Clang. The resulting binary contains zero runtime overhead — every actuator type, pin number, and sensor is a compile-time constant.

See: Fixo Controller Reference

Earlier releases shipped a runtime-configurable ArduMY/Fluxo path, a Servotor32 binding, and an IController abstraction layer. All three were removed in 2026 — Fixo replaces them with a unified compile-then-flash workflow and a single concrete controller class.

User inputs

User inputs are artificial sensor-like values generated from the OctoMY™ user interface.

Example

A GUI presents a car steering wheel and throttle. When the user interacts using touch:

• Steering angle is generated and streamed to controller
• Throttle position is generated and streamed to controller

User input classification

Sample rate

How often is the input sampled? Usually limited by GUI refresh rate and/or input devices.

Latency and stability are limited by UI engine performance.

Sample acquisition

Configuration sections

Controller section (Plan)

{
  "type": "fixo",
  "preset": "rc-car"
}

Actuator reference section

{
  "controller": "main",
  "actuator": "throttle",
  "flags": ["reverse"]
}

Lobe section

{
  "type": "wheeled",
  "throttle": {"controller": "main", "actuator": "throttle"},
  "steering": {"controller": "main", "actuator": "steering"}
}

Wheeled lobe

Legged lobe

Puppet and pose

Puppet section

{
  "actuators": [/* puppet actuator list */]
}

Pose section

{
  "puppet": "main_puppet",
  "values": [
    {"id": 0, "mode": "move", "value": 90},
    {"id": 1, "mode": "limp"},
    {"id": 2, "mode": "freeze"}
  ]
}

Animation section

{
  "poses": [
    {"time_ns": 0, "pose": "start"},
    {"time_ns": 1000000000, "pose": "middle"},
    {"time_ns": 2000000000, "pose": "end"}
  ]
}

Animations are sequences of poses with nanosecond timestamps. Only poses for one puppet are allowed per animation.