Well, thanks to not being allowed to alter Serenit-e's looks, I have a spare set of tracks & a dual-motor gearbox to work with - seems a shame to let them go to waste.
Bob is going to be a test-bed for trying out any new circuitry I come up with, such as controller boards, sensors, displays etc.
Construction is along the same lines as Serenit-e, i.e. look around for scrap & assimilate it. I've learnt that 5mm foamboard is great for making mounts for boards etc as it's easy to cut, non-conductive & can have little dents pushed into it to accomodate screw-heads etc.
The only pre-made components I'm planning on including are the tracks/motors at least until I can get around to fabricating my own tracks.
First new piece of tech to be installed is my stripboard Arduino μcontroller board. It's based off the one on the instructables site and the Marengo one (damned if I can find the links atm). Notable improvements: a screw terminal for power as the soldered leads broke off within 2 days and a red board because plain stripboard looks boring! I built a small ICSP shield for the board so that it can be programmed using my usbtinyISP.
So far, he's not moving as Im working on a stripboard L298N board but once that's done, basic environment sensing will be through 2 LDRs for light following until I can get my head around Oddbot's fantastic looking IR sensors.
Side view
Front view. The 3-hole bracket towars the front will be used to mount sensors on when I get them fabricated.
Board off & battery holder out of it's 'bucket'.
A closer view of the stripboard Arduino & ICSP shield (no way are you getting to see the solder side, the horror would be too much to take).
Eventually, this little beast will hopefully end up with object-tracking, sonar or IR range finding, bump switches, a line detector and IR beacon detector if it all fits on board but for now, I'll be happy if I can make a working motor controller :-)