Ahhh, I see. I will give it a try!
EDIT: When I try to align anything, it either stays in the same spot its in or it gives me an error saying its interfering with another alignment. =/
P.S. If you have the time, could you come on YIM again? I want to talk to you about something. Erm, privately in realtime.
Hey guys,
I’ve been searching around this morning looking at specs for the different nano-itx boards. I found the specs page on the via website and some helpful manuals. I got some more info on the new Pico-ITX boards that will be coming out. They are like 10 x 7.2cm (compared to 12 x 12cm of the Nano-ITX). This is about 50% of the area. Much smaller.
The Pico-ITX board is 1GHz in speed, which is nice! They aren’t very expensive. Same price as the Nano-ITX board actually. They take up about 5-9w less power than the Nano-ITX which is nice because it frees up some battery power. I can either get a smaller battery, or have the same battery run longer.
What do you guys think? Should I keep the Nano-ITX design, or get a Pico-ITX board?
The smaller space allows me to actually put the USB control interface on the same deck as the motherboard. This will also mean that the motors wont interfere with the sensitive sensors like acc/gyros, etc.
I am not sure about the hard drive still. I know I will need a 2.5" laptop drive. They are fairly expensive, but I could get 'em still. Since SSD is too expensive, I was thinking of using a Compact Flash card. I’ve seen 'em not too expensive but with high GB capacity. I could also get a SATA/IDE to CF adapter for fairly cheap. CF would mean low noise, low heat. And it wouldn’t be affected by vibrations.
I have almost everything thought out except for the USB control board related things. I will take a day or two some time to work that stuff out. Possibly make a schematic so I can see how much crap I’m actually dealing with. I’m sure I’ll still center it around a 18F4550. I might get a higher end 18F6xxx because I think they support motor controlling. That would be great because I wont have to get MOSFETs or H-Bridges. Or at least I don’t think I will.
Anyhow, feel free to post any questions/comments/concerns. I will try to reply as soon as I can. Probably within 5 minutes as I’m bored 
-robodude666
Just a heads up that I have not successfully managed to get my mini-itx to boot win xp home from a cf card, even after I bought off on the 4+ hours to literally do an xp install to it just like it was a HDD. I do not yet know why I can’t seem to get this to work but you might want to make sure who ever you buy the cf module from (I am suspecting it has something to do with my 4G cf card) is certain you will be able to boot from it.
Are you running the CF card off of SATA or IDE? I know that Windows XP (and some other versions) don’t support VIA’s SATA controller by default. You need to either get a modified XP disk (with the drivers added) or specify the Via SATA control via a floppy. If the CF card is a regular IDE card, you should be able to boot from it by selecting it as the boot device in the BIOS. Does the BIOS detect the CF card?
it’s setup on IDE channel as primary device 0. BIOS sees it. XP doesn’t seem to want to boot from it. Very odd. I seem to remember something in the CF 1.4 spec about a “bootable” bit in the config register but I didn’t think that was accessible when the card was plugged in as an IDE device. I’ll chase it down eventually… it might just be I have a stupid CF card or something. I guess I was just bringing it up because you sounded like you might be heading down the same path and if there is any way for you to be certain it works for you before spending lots of money and even more time it might be worth the effort.
By the way you can find like 10GB 2.5" HDDs around… usually from refurb places that upgrade laptops.
I don’t even have any parts of the rover yet 
Of course I can find small 10GB laptop HDDs… But they generate heat and noise. I was thinking of using CF or SSD because it is silent and very little heat. But they are both expensive options.
Anyhow, I think I decided on the Pico-ITX. It is 1GHz with a small fan. The board is 10cm x 7.2cm, very small compared to the Nano-ITX. It also uses on average 5w less power based on idle and load watt usages.
One other thing…
I was thinking of using the GHM-15 motors because they have encoders… But they are almost 3" in length. If I can get smaller motors, I can cut an inch to maybe 3 from my rover design. Anyone know of other powerful motors that have encoders on them? Other than the GHM-04.
I heard from linuxguy that the OpenServo circuit can be used on any motor, not only servos. Has anyone else heard this?
-robodude666
What’s wrong with using the GHM-04? As we discussed, they are a lot shorter, even with the encocders installed. Do they have enough torque for your design? The GHM-15 is about 1.5 times the torque, but look how much longer it is than the GHM-04.
Think about it… Servos are really nothing more than an enclosed motor with a potentiometer and electronics board for control. That electronics board is really just a motor controller with any added features the servo is designed to provide. That’s really what the Open Servo boards are, and the beauty of them is the entire design, hardware and software, is Open Source, so you can redesign and rebuild whatever parts of it you need to for your application. This includes adding beefier fets for beefier motors and such. 
Using them as a motor controller, you are not constrained by the size of a servo case…
8-Dale
Well, I’ve decided to extend the bot from 7.3 to 8" in diameter. Crazy huge bot! I want to use the GHM-15 motors for the encoders. Later on, I will redesign the bot and make a v2 which will be smaller.
I decided on the Pico-ITX, but its fairly new. I can’t find many people using it! I want to use Windows XP Embedded because its tiny as hell and uses less resources than regular XP. But i’m not sure if it will work. I’m also not sure if RoboRealm will even work on the Pico-ITX… Its a 1GHz CPU and RoboRealm recommends a minimum of 2GHz. I might have to decrease the FPS which won’t be good.
I also noticed one other problem with the Pico-ITX. It doesn’t have a miniPCI slot. I was planning on using one for a WiFi card so I can communicate between it and my computer. This way the rover won’t have to drag around a mouse/keyboard and monitor. I guess its not a big deal as I can always use a USB wireless adapter. Hmm…
Hey guys,
I learned some new things about RoboRealm that will make my life easier!
There is a “write to file” command in RoboRealm which can export variables as either a txt file with commas, spaces, etc… Or a XML file!
This means I won’t have to have a VB program writing the vars into a txt file. With this command, the txt file is updated whenever the vars change.
But, best of all, is I don’t even NEED the txt file method. RoboRealm has an API server which I can use to talk with C++! There is an example on the site which I want to try out later tonight.
I also read the tutorial about line following using RR. It helped me understand how to use the camera to navigate. I think before I do my original goal, I will do a line following bot so learn about control and all that stuff.
This is starting to look like a blog more than a project log. I mean, you guys need to give your opinions and post too >_>
-robodude666
Oh, hey, ginge over at Open Servo is starting to work on the software for continuous rotation…
8-Dale
I’m also thinking about building a robot based on a mini-itx board. I can you 2 R/C car batteries, a power supply built for car computers, a USB WiFi dongle, a USB webcam, and a custom PIC based USB board for motore control and sensors.
I think I can write all the software myself only using Windows or Linux. The problem I have is the hardware. Where do I get the parts to make a robot big enough to handle a 7’ by 7’ board plus other hardware?
I made an ordering mistake for another project and will be getting an extra Intel mini-itx board. That is the board I’m planning to use.
I was just thinking that I could make the base out of plywood. What would be good motors, brackets, and wheels for a relatively large robot. I was thinking of a four wheel differential drive robot.
For a platform, I’d look in the newspaper for sale ads, yard sales, and goodwill types of stores for a child’s riding toy like below. They are usually tough and can carry a good bit of weight. If you are going to use wifi, might as well get something that can operate out doors and has some operating range to make use of the extended wifi range.
tinyurl.com/23kevr
tinyurl.com/25gf2p
walmart.com/search/browse-ng … NavId=4198
By differential drive do you mean skid steering like the lynxmotion 4wd1 platforms or do you mean an axle with a differential in it? skid steering a really larger chassis may be problematic on anything but loose surfaces.
there are a couple of mini-itx based projects on the forum, use search to find the “itx” threads.
If you want to make a large rover, then make sure to check out the turtle project:
lynxmotion.net/viewtopic.php?t=2012
Now, lets not hijack my thread
Yes, I mean skid like the lynxmotion 4wd1.
I know how to handle the software part and how to use PIC chips as glue between the USB ports of the mini-itx and the motors/sensors. I just don’t know that much about the mechanical part.
I was thinking the robot would be on the order of 10" x 18". Not something huge, just big enough to hold a mini-itx board and an RC car battery.
I see alot on the electrical/computer/software side of things but not alot on the mechanical side.
The new A4WD1 robot can hold an ITX motherboard. For now you must make a deck with the mounting holes, or drill some mounting holes into an add-on-deck. We are working on this, but it’s going to be another couple months before it is ready.
Sorry for the hijack… 
No worries Jim =P Your Jim Frye, the Robot Guy! You can do anything you want on your forums. haha
That looks pretty sick. Make a rover thats smaller than 8 x 8" and i’ll use it for my project =D
To get back on subject, how is the board going to be powered? I did a quick scan of the discussion and didn’t notice a specific answer to this question.
Ooooh! Aaaaah! Shiny.
