Parallax Boe-Bot Kit

I recently won a Parallax Boe-Bot robot kit at the Robotics Society of Southern California (RSSC) for coming in 1st place in the Line-Following competition. I had a lot of fun building the kit, but I found the Basic Stamp 2 language a little bit strange because I'm used to Python and Java instead of Basic, so it was hard at first to understand. I eventually figured it out.

My robot uses the following components:

• (2) IR emitter/detector pairs (for vision)
• (2) metallic whiskers (touch sensors)
• (1) Parallax Basic Stamp 2
• (1) Parallax Board of Education (BOE)
• (2) Continuous Rotation Servos
• (2) RED LED's
• (1) Piezo Speaker
• (4) AA Batteries

It was tricky fitting all the components on the small space provided on the breadboard, but I did it. The robot navigates using the IR sensors, and falls back to the whiskers as back-up in case the IR fails. But the IR sensors seem to work really well, in fact they work a little too well!!! I'm saving my money to buy the gripper kit, and I want to try and build a robot that can fetch me a drink.

The video shows my robot avoiding some obstacles I set up.  The left IR sensor seems to be more sensitive than the right one for some reason and I have not figured out why. 

Another hard part of working with the Basic Stamp 2 is I only have Ubuntu.  My dad won't get me a windows computer, so I had to run the Basic Stamp Editor in WINE.  Luckily it ran well enough and I was able to program my Boe-Bot using the Basic Stamp Editor.

In total, I spent about 8 to 10 hours on this project. It was fun, and I improved my basic skills. I wish I had the arduino version of the Board of Education (BOE) because I've done some work with Arduino in the past, and it would have been easier to things running in Linux, but now that I learned some BASIC it's not too bad.