TreadBot

[skimask]

it doesnt have to be perfect, its just for fun.,.. im thinking that although i love the size of this thing, it might be a tiny bit too small for experimenting with all this stuff...

Well, you could always go vertical with the PCBs, stack them with interconnecting header pins for power and use some IR emitter/detector pairs to communicate data, or whatever...then again, that might make the thing too tall to go under stuff...

Skimask, thats exactly the same thing i was talking about.. haveing a bunch of base stations around, that all emit different pulses, and have the robot decode that, and triangulate where it is...

Might be a bit of an MCU intensive process, might involve floating point math, then again, might be able to make it 'just good enough' and not 'perfect'.

As far as the PIC goes, the only thing I see limiting is program space. And when that happens, you could do what I said earlier, offload some processing to a daughterboard vertically stacked.

This almost sounds like too much fun! I outta be building one myself...as soon as my 'lab' in the basement gets done.

[dragons_fire]

right now (without the PCB and components) it will fit underneath 3/4 of the doors in my house!!! the only think that could stop it is stairs!!!

I was thinking i could stack the boards 2 or 3 high, and that would give lots of room for all the sensors and other "gadgets" that i would like to add.. It would also be a lot smaller if i went with all SMT stuff and make everything myself instead of using prebuilt components. at the moment in designing it to use a serial motor driver, which uses a 9-pin header, a pic12f629 and a dual h-bridge chip. if i put the h-bridge directly on my board, and ran it off of the 18f6585, it would be tiny... at the moment, im using it for simplicity, it uses a 4byte command to control direction and speed or both motors.

With the mapping, i was thinging of doing it somewhat like a micromouse would. the room would be divided into little squares, and then it would decide which squares it can go in, and which ones it cant..

i would like to make a list of different "missions" for robots, not just for me, but for anyone else that just plays around with this stuff. to start, here are some of the things im working on, and some others that i would like to make someday:
workin on:
house mapping
cave exploring - lots of old mines around my place
snowplow

others:
photophobic
phottropic
lawnmower
sumo competition
micromouse
firefighting
minesweeping

if anyone has any others, lets hear them... im sure there are lots of other things out there...

[dragons_fire]

this is a neat idea, a little expensive for hobby robotics though....

http://www.robotshop.ca/home/product...ar-system.html

[mackrackit]

this is a neat idea, a little expensive for hobby robotics though....

http://www.robotshop.ca/home/product...ar-system.html

Looks similar to Skimask idea, I was going to suggest sonar also. I have a cheap sonar measuring tape that is pretty accurate. Use two to have a location.

Let us know what you plan to use and we will see if we can help.

[dragons_fire]

i was thinkin about using one of those "laser" measuring tapes.. i had a parallax ultrasonic sensor, which is probably not much different (although mine is only good to about 10 feet). i was thinkin about maybe adding a small servo to it, and mount a distance sensor on top, then it could sweep and it would be able to tell what distance at what angle (by using what pulse is sent to the servo).

my motors and motor controller dont arrive here till tomorrow, thats why its all just 'ideas" right now... when they get here, it will be time to start designing the PCB and putting it all together...

[dragons_fire]

so... i ordered some motors and a motor controller from robotshop.ca, and it gave me 3 shipping options... it could come on monday for $6, friday (3 days before) for $10 or thursday for $28.. i picked friday, so i would have them mto play with over the weekend.. well, guess what i just found in my mailbox (its thursday today for those of you who dont know) !!!

so im sitting here putting it all together and thinking.. i need a way to connect all these things together...
up until now, i have always used .10 headers for all my connections such as servos and sensors.. basically everything uses headers.. so my next question is:

does anyone know of any small 2pin and 3-pin connectors, that are smaller than .1 headers?? preferably with digikey part numbers if possible...

thanks again...
Danny

[skimask]

so im sitting here putting it all together and thinking.. i need a way to connect all these things together...up until now, i have always used .10 headers for all my connections such as servos and sensors.. basically everything uses headers.. so my next question is: does anyone know of any small 2pin and 3-pin connectors, that are smaller than .1 headers?? preferably with digikey part numbers if possible...

I would stick with the .1 headers for now, easy to put together, easy to tear apart if/when you make a mistake or a modification....but that's me, I'm crazy that way... As far as the smaller types go, flat flex cable maybe?
Have fun! Don't fry anything...at least anything that's not replaceable!