2 posts tagged “robot”

IT'S COMMING!!! At last, I shall have the parts necessary to rule the World! Or at least the Soveriegn Monarchy of Backyardia. (I can dream, can't I?). Actually, when I saw that the microcontroller (ultrasmall computer) that I would be using had eight input/output pins, my heart sank but my brain started thinking. For I was hoping to get two Basic Stamp 2's, with sixteen input/outputs, but unfortunately, my wallet would not allow for this. Plus, one must always start small. So I settled for the Basic Stamp 1, with only eight i/o pins. One would be setup for the transmitter, the other for the receiver.

    It will work something like this:

The first Stamp will take my joystick inputs and turn them into a serial format for the ultrasound transmitter, which will in turn transmit the data to the second Stamp, which will in it's turn convert the serialized data into impulses to control various motors and servos to control the robots locomotion, camera pan/tilt, and other impliments.

But, as these are all coming by UPS Ground, which is only slightly faster than the United States 300 baud Postal Service, it may be a while until they get here. I can't wait!

For the past couple of years now, the dream has been drifting around my head to create a robot, and here's the book that started it all:

Behold...Beager! The name comes from my initials, BGR. The name came to me after watching Star Trek, The Motion Picture. The coincidence was too good to pass up.

Rough as it looks, it works, and I have taken it around the front porch with an umbilical cord of sorts for control, with a switch turning each motor on, and working in tandem, could thus turn around in about three feet. Thus, I really haven't used it very much. But with a 2 or 3 channel remote control, it will be easy sailing to get each motor under full forward/reverse/everywhere-in-between control, with great maneuverability. (btw, Beager is about two and a half feet wide.)