Hi everyone. My name is Patrick and I’ve been in robotics for over a while now. My experience has mainly revolved around the parallax boe bot. I’ve done pretty much everything I can with the boe bot and am looking to take on something harder, preferably a biped. Right now I’m debating whether to go with the Scout or the BRAT. Cost isn’t that big of an issue to me, though quality and capability is (I’ve found a site where you can buy a scout kit for $440 with analog servos instead of digital servos). My question is this: Do you think that stepping up to the scout when I’ve never programed bipeds before is too big of a step up? I was sold on the brat until I saw it only had only 3 DOF. I want something that doesn’t have to shuffle to turn, but then again does the ease of use make up for it’s limitations? Any insight would be very much appreciated. Thankyou!
My personal oppinion is that the scout is extremly hard to program due to 6 sevo’s in each leg. I started on the scout myself and had it walking, but only off of the program lynxmotion gives everyone. I would say start out on the brat, and if you want go ahead and get heavy duty servo’s so you can later transfer to the scout, if you find that the brat has become to easy.
The Brat is the best first bot because it only uses six servos. It’s also a lot cheaper to build, and you can always use the brackets from the brat and use 'em for your scout or any other SES bot you want to build later.
It’s best, in my opinion, to start simple and work your way up, gaing experiance with a simple setup and take what you learn from the brat and and apply it to a more complex bot later on down the road. The brat will give you a great introductory experiance with using the SES parts, wiring up the electronics, and programing the atom/pro.
With the brat, everything can be reused for the scout except the channel bracket, but even the channel bracket my find use later on down the road since it is also SES compatable.
I am building a brat myself for all the reasons mentioned above.