Carpet Rover with arduino, QME and Sabertooth 2x12 (non-R/C)

Lynxmotion Rovers, Sumo, and Tracked
1

Hi All,

Just a little background, I got my first lynxmotion kit back in '97 or '98, it was a carpet rover with a basic stamp 1 (!), servos modified for continuous movement and the older IR distance sensor - I had to put pieces of scotch tape over the IR receiver to adjust the sensitivity. This robot would just go forward and if it encountered a wall or some other object would reverse to the right and then go forward again until it “saw” something else. Neat little guy…built him when I was 18 in high school. Took him to college with me where I would show him off from time to time, and once I graduated, I held a little workshop for the “shoproom” class at a local private school that my 7th grade shop teacher was running (he got me into boolean logic and robot kits once I had completed my woodworking assignments). He later got a Lynxmotion arm and I helped the class construct it. anyway…

Back in 2005 I got my first real, full time job after doing stints of contract work and I started putting together another carpet rover. This time I got some gearhead motors, quadrature motor encoders (the ones that are still on the LM website). I got all the mechanical stuff completed, but then I drifted in between other hobbies…I found a slot car track by me and I’ve kinda been doing that since late 2005.

A few months ago I started going through my favorites links and I got to Lynxmotion and browsed the site. The BotBoardArduino caught my eye and the price was right so I ordered one and have been playing with it in my spare time. Neat little board! :slight_smile: I started digging around and I found the robot I started constructing in '05! Dusty as all heck but she looks like a good platform.

Anyway, this evening I ordered a sabertooth 2x12 (non R/C, this is going to be another autonomous bot) and I plan on getting some more parts to flesh her out. In the meantime, as I save up for more parts, I have some questions:

  1. Does anyone have some code they could share for the Quadrature Motor Encoders? A sketch for bbArduino would be awesome but BASIC or even pseudocode would work too.

  2. For powering the bbArduino on the bot, should I just use a 9v battery or would a battery pack (and which voltage?) work too? I plan on using a seperate 12v pack for the sabertooth.

Well, that’s a big read for two questions, hah! :mrgreen:

Thanks in advance and hope to have something worth showing soon.

Mike

2

Thanks for the background history. :slight_smile:

I don’t have encoder code for Botboarduino, but I can answer the voltage question. The Botboarduino can take up to 12vdc as the logic power source.

3

You should take a look at the Arduino Playground.

Here’s a link to the encoder section.