Snails

So after trying my hand at putting together some kits and getting my feet wet I decided to build my very own robot from scratch, Snails.

  It's called Snails because I think it resembles a snail the way the battery holder comes up over the power and motor board.  I learned a lot by actually putting it together, 1. I never want to do point to point wiring again 2. you should never directly solder your chip directly to your board without a way to reprogram it, no matter how confident you are on he breadboard and 3. I never want to do point to point wiring again.

 It was supposed to be a photovore but do to a wiring mistake when I was assembling it it is now phototropic.  It uses infrared bump sensors and a a L293D to drive the motors.  The brains are a PIC16f628 programed using picbasic pro.

 All in all it was a good learning experience and the way I built it I can always go back and remove the brain board and upgrade it with a better one to do other things or whatever. 

 So now that the first one is out of the way its time to try my hand at some more complicated designs and build off of the things I've learned.