Frank 0.1

My first robotics project and introduction into the world of electronics in general. I was going to grab the Parallax BOE Bot but while doing my research I ran across the Arduino board and all the interesting projects being developed on it. That along with the C/C++ based language led me to chose it over the BASIC stamp from Parallax.

After following the (good?) advice of looking for cheap parts at garage sales I came back from my first expedition with 3 RC cars for 75 cents so I figured Id just build my first robot from one of these. While the construction is going much slower than if Id bought a kit Im having a blast figuring out the most trivial of integration issues and learning a bit as well.

Currently heres whats in a state of "mostly works" (I enable/disable certain capabilities when working on new ones, they occassionally work when I hook it all back up):

• SN75441NE controlling 2 motors (rear motor controls forward & reverse, front motor controls left & right). 12 volts seems to be needed to get the motor, motoring. Odd since theres a place for 2 "AA" batteries in the body. This is no where near enough juice with my configuration. Not sure what Im doing wrong here but more power seems to overcome the issue.
• ADNS-2610 optical mouse innards mounted between the rear wheels captures "distance" travelled - there may be a fundemental flaw in this design since the distance measured varies depending on motor speed. Lesson learned: I think a stepper motor solves this whole mess but it was cool interfacing the optical reader.

Next steps:

• Mount a servo that will sweep a Sharp GP2Y0A21YK IR Proximity sensor which will intially be used for avoidance meandering. The idea is this: the sweeping servo combined with the IR sensor can detect the best path, then translate this into forward and lateral movements.
• Create a custom motor sheild, I really want to solder something! Plus I want my breadboard back for other explorations.

References

• Interfacing an optical mouse sensor to your Arduino
• Control a DC motor with Arduino and L293D chip
• SparkFun Electronics - the user contributed product comments are really useful
• Getting Started with Arduino - very basic intro useful for the first week with your new arduino
• Make: Electronics - a great introduction to electronics, plenty of pictures, fun experiments, love the book format, sits open on its own. Ive only just started this book, but would recommend it highly for newbies like myself (i.e. complete and total)
• http://www.arduino.cc/
• Proximity Guide for Sharp IR (pdf) by oomlut - has distance formula