So a friend and I are looking to utalize some of the old laptops and verious sensors he has lying around, and I've been wondering: what does one need component wise to build a rather cheap robot from a laptop? I've been reading around, but I am having a lot of trouble with it. The machine we were looking to construct is at minimum to be aproximately 2 feet tall, and the laptop's components were to be mounted inside the machine. The functions of the robot are to simply move about, and detect objects and attempt to avoid them.
I've read where all sorts of interesting functions can be added, from adding cameras (which we have avaliable) to remote controlling the robot through a phone. But again, right now while I'm learning to build larger machines, I was looking to keep to learning what I need base wise before going a bit more out. We were also looking to use flash cards instead of normal hard drives due to the fact that solid state works better with moving machines.
Any help or points would be wonderful, I've been looking for any info, and again, it's been rather tough.
current robot specifications:
Laptop used as core microcontroller
multi wheeled(4 wheels aprox)
aprox 2- 2.5 ft. tall
I also heared I will need a motor controller becuase laptops are not able to control the current for the various motors.
Again, any help would be wonderful, and I am sorry if I managed to pop this in the wrong forum for any reason.
You’ll need some gearmotors with decent grunt, and you’ll definitely need a motor driver to control them. You’ll also need to think about battery options, with big motors the laptop battery won’t last long.
SLA (Sealed Lead Acid) batteries are a common choice for bigger bots, and pretty cheap for the power they can deliver. Lithium-ion/polymer or NiMH are lighter, but cost more and you’ll need a more specialised charging circuit (especially for lithium-based cells).
