New to robots. Just wondering if anyone knows what pc parts could be used in a relatively small first project.
Microcontroller, cpu etc.
Ty
The WhiteBox and Coroware (and others) line of robots are essentially PCs on wheels.
The reason more people don’t build this type of robot is that the processor and motherboard of most PCs are power hungry and drain the battery quickly. The second issue is that the larger the battery, the larger the drive motors etc. The price goes up quickly compared to if you just want to use a small (10 gram) microcontroller.
There are single board computers coming out which provide respectable processing power, I/O pins, RAM, video etc. and can run complete operating systems but weight (and cost) a lot less than normal PC parts. Take a look at the RoBoard and Rasperry Pi for example. Other developers simply put a small netbook PC on top of a mobile base.
If you wanted to make a PC based robot, you’d need the motherboard, processor, hard drive and RAM. You’d connect the motor controllers via USB (a computer cannot directly control motors).