Home Explorer

Just bought the Tamiya Track & Wheel Set 70100 and Double Gearbox 70168 yesterday for HKD $80 (~ USD10).  The tank base will be about 7" x 3".

I've built a simple radar station as shown on the video. It is an ultrasonic sensor mounted on a servo. The output of the sensor is fed to PC thru wireless module. The PC side software reconstruct a radar like screen for human to read. http://hk.myblog.yahoo.com/jw!afd6dGGRHBRkp2laqwk198fg/article?mid=320

I plan to improve the ultrasonic radar station with GD2D12, so that the radar station will have full range distance measuring capability. The radar station will be put on top of the tank. It collects data and transmits back to the PC thru the wireless module.

The tank will be equipped with rotation counter which mounted near the shaft of the gearbox, so that I know how many turns it make for each wheel. This information will be sent to the PC also. From this data, I will know how long the tank has been travelled, in which direction. 

The PC side program will construct the map of my home accordingly from the data sent from the tank. Finally it will have a rough map of my home for navigation. 

Most modules are ready, except the cheap wireless modules are not very stable.

The PC side map building program will be a challenge. Also, I am not sure if I can well estimate the location of the tank by counting the turns of the wheels only, without digital compass or other measurement. Anyway it is fun to build a tank and let it explore.

Tank Base

The tank base is ready. It ends up it can run on either sides. http://hk.myblog.yahoo.com/jw!afd6dGGRHBRkp2laqwk198fg

Radar Station Software

The radar station software is written in python. It need python 2.5, pyserial (for serial port communication), wxPython (for GUI). 

The ultrasonic ranger keeps generating the data and feed to the radar station thru RS232. The data contains the servo position, and a list of time measurement of the echos. It is a DIY ranger, at each pulse, it records multiple echos due to multiple objects in front of the ranger. I am not sure if other rangers record multiple echo, or just give you one echo measurement.

The application has 2 threads. One is receiving the data (Radar object), and the other display the result nicely on screen (radarWin).