Farewell to SBot 2 Version 1

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At last the time has come to say farewell to SBot 2 v1. I have decided to rebuild it using a new chassis instead of trying to rig something up to get it to work. I wanted this robot to be durable and usable all day with autonomous operation. After so many issues, it’s time to go back to the drawing board. SBot2 brought me many learning experiences and the like Sbot 1, it has enabled me to rebuild it with a much better design. Building SBot 2 brought many good and bad times. A lot of money spent with very little much to show for it, except for a robot that can go forward and backward and “try” to stop before it hits an object. So …

Week of 08/14/2011 & 08/21/2011 – Motor Stuff

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On a mission to solve this motor problem I was up late one night doing research. After some calculations and research of different motors I ended up ordering a few. The difficult thing was finding a motor that was the same size and low power requirements but having more torque than what I had. Fast forward to this week of 08/22/2011 and my motors have finally arrived. I spent the evening swapping the front two motors and testing the results before I replaced the other two. To my disappointment they seemed weaker than the originals.  The next day, I decided to put the originals back in. Wow! Such a pain to end up at square one. I ended up breaking 2 tabs, one on each motor. It was frustrating. But …

Week of 08/07/2011 – Motor Problems and Other Projects

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Another week has gone by without making much progress on the SBot project. My primary problem has been getting it to turn reliably. There is seemingly insufficient torque to turn with the weight even with 4 DC motors, but they are wired in parallel in sets of 2. Using the bathroom scale, my robot weighed in at a reasonable 3.8 pounds. There are ways I can turn over a distance but not within a small space which is needed for docking. After some research and posting online, it doesn’t seem that my problem is power related even though the LCD does dim when the motors start moving. Disconnecting the LCD doesn’t seem to make a difference, so I really need stronger motors. Last week after having coming …

Robot Control Web Site

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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 …

Security Bot 2 Completed Pictures

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After my project was posted on Hack A Day I realized I don’t have pictures of the completed build. Of course it goes it without saying that it is really never completed. Who knows what we will be added in the next year or two?  Sensor ouput on LCD Right: distance sensors and brightness across the bottom. Left: camera angles and battery levels. Bottom: temperature and humidity followed but the last spoken text. View from the rear which includes the IR switches on the left and right. At the bottom is the DC jack that is connected to the charging rails underneath. The PCB from top to bottom, Xbee, Voice, Proto, Mega Left: shows the microcontroller battery and step-up. Charging dock using copper …

Week of 07/17/2011 Status update of SBot 2

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I’ve decided to set a goal of blogging about my project progress at least once a week. I get so enthralled with code and such that I set aside blogging about it. Week Status: This past week was spent working on the serial read and parsing functions and now working on the website. Next Week Goals: I have a robotics meeting coming up in one week and a half so I really need to spend the time to work on motor control. Forward and backward works pretty good. I wish the sensor detected objects better but I need to do some testing on the field of view for each sensor. My main problem is finding an efficient way to turn. The …

Serial Reading and Parsing

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The code for SBot 2 started with playing with the SpeakJet from SparkFun. I used the code example they posted and my code grew from there as I added functions. This lead to some bad code for receiving serial data and parsing it. Since it was based from the example I had added some code to look for a command character and therefore had some duplicated code and bad data handling. For awhile, it was fine and worked for what I needed. Finally, I was ready to start updating my Robot Web Controller site to add SBot 2 as it was only setup for SBot 1. The SBot 2 has a completely different API. This is where I noticed an odd problem …

Security Bot 2

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After completing my first Security Bot, I had come across the DFRobot 4WD platform. Once viewing some projects made with it, I was inspired for my second creation. This time around I decided to cram as many sensors into it as possible. My goal was to make this my main robot that I could continually expand upon. I started ordering parts in January mostly from my three favorite sites. Sparkfun, Adadruit, and now DFRobot and DSS Circuits.  I also a ordered a Arduino Mega Protoshield from NKC Electronics. It turns out Adadruit sells the same board. I decided I wanted to make this one more permanent and use the protoshield and solder everything with header connections for the sensors. This makes it much cleaner and easily …