Arduino_Robot_RunPing.zip (1928Bytes)
This is a review of the new Official Arduino Robot. There is no doubt this robot is priced too high for what you get, yet it does have some interesting features and may be a good buy for colleges and universities as a training tool. Go to the Arduino primary website for all the hardware information you could possibly ask for. Be ready for two HUGE schematics in Eagle format (one for the control board and one for the motor board). Now go to the Robot Library section but remember this. Most of the main demo programs there work without modification, but there is a lot of things that are confusing and some things are just plain wrong. Examples include the need to do a "pinMode(TKD1, OUTPUT);" in "Setup" and then you can do a "Robot.digitalWrite(TKD1, HIGH);" as you would expect. One example forgets to do the "pinMode" command... Other small "ouches" exist like "Servo.h" no longer working and it gives errors when you try to compile with it. (I did get a PING))) sensor to work so driving a servo should not be impossible, just hard like operating the PING))) sensor was. (The robot requires the libraries in Arduino 1.0.5 and that isn't far away from 1.0.4 so I suspect a lot of improvements can be made.) I am using the robot from Windows 7/64 bits and it is working fine. My pc did change the USB address of the control board from 4 to 11 by itself. But hey, it works. What I DO NOT LIKE: Power: 4 AA rechargable cells powering 2 Arduino processors and everything else. Don't expect long battery life... Encoders: There aren't any. There is a small pot to compensate motor speed and there is current feedback, but encoders would be really nice! I DO LIKE the compass and it is working fine for me, keeping the bot in a straight line and showing on the nice color LCD display as I rotate the robot. An accelerometer would have been nice too... Overall: I like the robot and plan on doing a lot with it, but it may or may not be what you want, like any other Arduino board. (Included, find example code for "Runaway Robot" using a PING))) sensor and multiple other mods.)
