It's been awhile...well a long time

I've spent the last year bouncing around like a bb in a runaway boxcar going through a mountain pass.  Between two hospital stays and trying not to get too far behind on everything while working like a madman, there hasn't been much free time let alone time to breathe.  So finally caught up with life, sorta(crosses fingers) and not planning on going anywhere for awhile I hope.

Tomorrow is UPS day

I will finally get the picaxe usb cable I need to program the motor driver. I've been looking at the AtMega8s as the next step for the Motor Driver Board, it has plenty of PWM pins and such. It's typical of research, it starts off in one direction and then veers off to somewhere else. To fully utilize it, I'd have to use 12 digital I/O.

The new cable works great, lesson learned, get the real thing and don't get a clone. Ah well, I'll still get stuff at SF just not that lol.  

Spending time researching

If you haven't read


If you have built a few robots, you know the frustration of wanting it to be able to do different things, but don't have the knowledge to do it. This book goes into the decision making, types of behaviors and  combing simple behaviors to make complex ones. Overall, it's a good informative read that would not put you to sleep.

In a few days, I'll be able to finish up the motor board. One of the reasons I'm not going to put a the stepper portion in is, because if I do that there isn't any room for the nap function or any of the error codes, function codes. I could crank things down a bit more than I have, but still would run into a memory problem. I could go with an ATmega 168, but that would be proc overkill. It'd give me all the PWMs, Analong pins and digital I/O I'd need to do it all from that chip, but not viable unless I can find a cheaper source for them.

Long Time No Blog

 Well, it's been two months to the day that I last posted a blog. A lot has been happening in my life in that time, just nothing in the realm of my hobby life of not has been happening.  I have all the parts for the Motor Control Board(MCB) and it's partially assembled, just waiting on the programming cable to come in the mail next week. Yes, I had to relearn a lesson, don't try to cut corners with bad clones.  Clones are like copies, neither are as good as the real thing.

One thing I did cut out of the MCB was the servo control part, because all that is needed to run servos is microcontroller itself. All the other chips would be a waste of space, power and money to control a bunch of servos.  So, the MCB will be able to control 4 DC motors or two bipolar stepper motors. Because I'm use a PIC, it will only have two PWMs though, I haven't decided to use one PWM for each L293D or use both PWMs on both chips, probably the later. I'd thought about using two PICs, but that would be a bit of overkill and increase the cost and size of the board.

I have ordered a PicAxe 8M and protoboard along with the correct and non-clone programming cable.

Update on Leo

Well got the rear bumper fixed, so Leo no longer has a ghetto bumper and won't be a hazard to knit shirts or other robots.

Leo's Ghetto Bumper or Most Embarrassing Pic for a Bot

Dayum, I'm good, only had to modify one hole in the bumper to get the bumper on. Actually, pure luck since at the time I drilled the holes to put on the aluminum plate I didn't have the part or know what I was going to use.

Just a bad pic of a decent job.

Monday I should be getting in the new motors for Leo, they can go up to 12V.  I can now run 9v batteries all around if I want and probably will once Leo goes into UAV mode and can take care of his own charging duties.

Leo's Ghetto Bumpers

Here's a pic of Leo's Ghetto Bumpers. One can improvise badly, yanno LOL

Leo's Ghetto Bumpers

Just laying out some thoughts

Ok to keep Leo moving in the direction he's supposed to be I'm going to use:

A1302 Hall Effect Sensors on his front idlers coupled with magnets to give feedback on his track speed.

2125 Mesmic Accelerometer is used to detect and calculate drift on carpet, smooth floors, track skidding and bumps in the floor.

Even with those, there is still going to be a lot of error from track skidding, carpet nap, bumps in the floor, track wear, and from not being put back down exactly where he got picked up.

Going to use a PING(or other sonar type sensor) and a sharp or two map out his local environment to cross reference with his internal map. Basically, trying to program Leo in a fashion that biologicals think or at least my poor understanding of how I perceive my self and others do things.

Voltage monitors will be implemented as well so that Leo just doesn't 'die' in the middle of the room. He will know when to return to his base(home) to re-charge(to eat). So will have to figure out how to get a charging circuit into his little body as well as everything else.