Throughout the week after receiving my PCB, I was able to start rebuilding SBot 1. So far I have been really happy with the results. Here are the shields I am using (Left to right, Arduino Pro, Custom PCB, Ardumoto, Xbee) The build: At a glance the robot looks very similar but the main difference is that it has much cleaner wiring and it has the Xbee shield on top. I added an IR switch in front for basic object detection. The new custom circuit includes temperature sensor, light sensor, and speaker output for playing melodies. While designing the circuit board I added a JST header for some line following sensors I bought a while back when I ordered parts for Sbot 2. They …
Finally, it has arrived! (Late Post)
It was the afternoon of November 25, we had finished our Black Friday shopping and had finally gained some needed sleep. I was anxiously awaiting for the mail carrier to deliver my order from BatchPCB. I checked the mailbox to find my anticipated package had finally arrived. I hurried inside, ripped open the envelope, and found not one but two beautiful PCB’s. Being it the Thanksgiving weekend and wanting to take good pictures, I wasn’t able to start using the boards until Sunday evening. Because playing a new Xbox title took precedence. With the weekend coming to a close I had to at least get something completed. My photographer (fiance) was able to take pictures before I started going at it with the soldering iron. Here are the boards, untouched: After testing the …
Back at it
After a long break I am back at it and time to make some serious progress, on Sbot 1 anyway. Since coming back from my Ohio trip, I had yet to come to a solution with Sbot 2, so I decided to take a break from it. Well, a few months have passed and I have returned to Sbot 1. I decided to finalize and polish it as a finished robot. (If there is such a thing as a completed robot, ha!) About 2-3 weeks ago, I decided I wanted to learn Eagle CAD so I needed a simple project to get me going. I took a look at my Sbot 1 and decided it could use a custom PCB …
Robot Control Web Site
Since SBot 1, I have been working on a web site to control my robot. This way any platform can control it as long as it has a browser. Eventually I may create specific apps for Android/iPhone just for the experience of mobile app development as I have not had the opportunity. I recently added forms based authencation. Before it would prompt for login. The back end uses Active Directory. This is the control site for SBot 1. You can see a tab for JBot1. That is an implementation I setup to use java to refresh the images so they are smoother but doesn’t work for mobile. Control site for Sbot 2 which doesn’t have all the controls yet. I started with the simple ASP.Net example in …
Week of 07/24/2011 and 07/31/2011
Even though this week isn’t over, I still wanted to post my current progress since during the week of July 17, most of my time was spent packing for Comic-Con in San Diego. It was an awesome trip and I will probably post pictures soon. I wasn’t able to blog about it or my robot again last week because with travelling, plus that many people at the Con, and lack of sleep, illness struck so I was out sick most of the week. So far, this week, I was able to make some progress. Me and my girlfriend have started a schedule to get us back into a weeknight routine so that we can work on projects and other to-do’s that …
Finally Some Pictures
I am finally getting around to posting some pictures of the first Security Robot. I am posting as much detail as possible as I find other blogs don’t post enough for people who want to get ideas and build something similar. For the videos I used my phone via a webpage to control the robot. I also have a Windows app that can control it. I haven’t decided if I wanted to writing a Android app to control it. It would be a good learning experience for developing Android apps, but the web page is much easier to update and runs on any device. The robot has 2 layers, bottom has gearbox, step-up and charger. Second is the top with electronics, battery and …
Help name my robot!
One of my biggest issues at the moment is coming up with a good name. I have never been good at coming up with names and this is proof. There will be two versions of my robot but both with similar purpose; the first one being much simpler of the two. Should they have similar names or different names? The idea is for them to be a security robot so I can monitor the house while I am away and collect data from the sensors. Of course this includes annoying the Girlfriend when I am not home. Currently, “Security Bot” is the temporary name. It’s simple, to the point but not at all very clever/creative. What should I name it? Post your ideas …
Security Robot 1 Progress
Since I started this blog after I started building my first robot I wanted to “catch up” on my progress. My first robot has turned out quite well and I have learned a lot along the way. I started designing my second one and can use what I have learned. Most of the parts are from Sparkfun.com and some Adafruit.com. I will list the parts and links to them soon. As with most projects they start of small and grow to much more. The same happened here. I started with the Arduino Starter Kit, just to play around with a microcontroller and then I needed a project to build with it and decided that a robot would be great since …