Finally better

I am finally over the strep, man alive that is some bad bad mojo. I did get a chance to do quite a bit of reading between naps(about 20+) because my schedule was wake up, take antibiotic, take cough meds, pass out, repeat. I did get a chance to re-read a lot of the bot stuff though, and have decided to make a small change in plans. I was going to make a freeduiono board with screw terminal blocks becuase I get tired of when Leo hits a bump or rolls over that a wire somewhere on the arduino comes loose.

The change is that there is going to be two boards, one to control Leo's body and one to do mapping, read sensors, make decisions, etc. The first board will control the drive motors, the neck and head position motors, and monitor their position and state sensors. I should be getting the parts in the next few days for both boards. It will be fun putting them together and then getting them to talk to each other. Leo will go from one MCU to two and will have two L293D chips. I'll be ordering the better motors for him this Thursday. Only a few things left to get for Leo. Need to find a sonic ranger, a PIR sensor, a mini servo.

Been awhile

It's been awhile since I've posted. Been dealing with a bad case of strep throat, and getting better now.  Looked into getting the 6v motors for Leo, but it will have to wait till I want some other stuff from Polulu.com. If I order now, I get 4 motors for $20 and if I wait till next month I can order 15 motors for just over $30. They are inexpensive, but the S&H is not.

Going to order the replacement L293D for the drive board and a few other things tonight from BGMicro. I have a few ideas I'm working on. IF they pan out, I will blog about them, if they fail....well if it's spectaculiar, I'll publish the film and if not ah well, you will never know *wink*

Mech outta here

Current projects

My current projects since Leo is almost physically complete are building up 4 arduino clones with a few personal additions and a few things like dual H-bridges with opto-couplers, IR sensor board(yes, I know you can buy sharp sensors ready to plug in to the MCU).   I got the magnets for the magnetic encoders, just have to find some bipolar hall effect sensors such as the 1302, which is found in the tachometer gear of most cars.  Found some on Ebay.com, but was hoping to support the local economy first before the world economy.

Leo is almost physically complete. Just need to wire up the IR sensors and get the hall effect sensors. Once those are installed the body part is done. After that I will switch out his motors for 6v ones and maybe add a head with some sensors on it.

Mesmic 2125

Was looking around Radio Shack last Friday and found a Mesmic 2125 accelerometer in the sensor bin, I also found a PING module from parallax too. Got the accelerometer, but not the PING module. I like to stay within a budget and I think I can find the sonic module cheaper online with S&H included. Got it home, got it hooked up, wrote a sketch to look at the data stream.   So may have to do some data sampling. Writing some procedures to do some data logging. I will find out tomorrow evening if they are worth the time it took to write them.

Video Clip of Leo

Leo's Maiden Run. Here's the link as promised. After he rounded the corner he got stuck in one. Time to work on sensors and upping his battery supply.  I may go ahead and put a low voltage sensor on his battery packs, so that I know when he's running low or just stuck.

Leo's First Run

Well, he lucked out on his first run, only found half of the corners and got stuck in every one of them *chuckles*. Otherwise, it was a great and informative maiden run. Especially, considering that the only sensors he has right now are his bumper switches. The next project will be to adding some range finders to him so he can hopefully avoid obstacles altogether. Though adding another 7805 FET would probably be a good idea if I want to add some juice to his motors. I need to get more rechargeable batteries as well, it seems that most of mine are dead and I do mean dead as in won't take a charge dead.

I'll try to upload the video of Leo's first run tomorrow. The lighting is bad and there is no sound, but it's a cool video still.

Leo has front bumpers now

Well, couldn't find the small hinges I needed for the bumpers, so I had to improvise. Seems that soda cans are useful for makeshift parts. I'd joked about using one for the hinges, but didn't think I was going to have to resort to such. Working on the rear bumper now and hopefully will get it done tonight so that I can do some more coding. Hopefully, tomorrow can work on the range finders. I need one more for the rear, but all is good.