Gaius Baltar, A4WD1 + Beagle Board (Looking for Comments)

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1

Hello All,

I’ve been lurking here for a while trying to put together a robot for a Computer Science club project. Comments & suggestions would be super helpful, this is a first time robot for all of us (and we’re not EE’s!). We’re shooting for an extensible base for doing CS type algorithms and projects.

Our currents specs are:

A4WD1 base with add on deck
-the motors for this
AL5C arm
-the servos for this

These are controlled by a SSC-32 and a Sabertooth 2x10 plugged into it.

The SSC gets commands over a USB to serial cable from a Beagle Board

We will also have a USB Webcam, and USB Wifi.

For fun we are also going to have a compass and an Ultrasonic rangefinder connected over I2C.

We are hoping to power all of this with a 10x1.2V 4000maH NIMH cells put together from a shop around here.

Does this sound reasonable? Also, which version of the Sabertooth do we need (RC or the other)? Finally, any update on the USB SSC-32 version, it would save us a converter cable.

Thanks for any input!

David

2

The obvious things are you can’t power the servos from 12vdc. The 2 x 5 RC is only RC, but the other has RC, analog voltage, or serial control options. It’s up to you which one is best.

We are currently waiting for the SSC-32 sample board before production starts. We are still many weeks away…

3

Hey thanks for the reply. We are going to use regulators to step down the voltage for the individual parts, 5V for the Beagleboard and USB hub, 6V for servos.

Good to know about the SSC. We’ll be getting the serial version then with a USB to serial cable.

David

4

Unless you have specific need for the Beagleboard and its small size, I’d consider using one of the now fairly inexpensive mini notebooks like below for the brains. For $300 it already has a OS, hard drive, self contained batterys, wifi, and you could easily sell it when the project is complete. I think there are plans for a larger framed A4WD1 to support the mini notebook size, but the current frame probably could be enlarged as needed.

officedepot.com/a/products/9 … 50-1635-8/

5

We definitely considered a netbook… Were leaning towards the beagle board because it has I2C and SPI built onto it and its going to be a bit cheaper (this project probably will never go away).

David