Post #7: SETBACK

Oy Vey.  This is not a success day, maybe just a learning moment :)

Top Deck layout challenge

I began setting up the top deck.  A lot has to go on here, but a couple of things on the top are anchors. The PIXY must go to the front, as far forward as i can get it and not interfere with the mounting bolts of the top deck.  The compass I would like to locate it top dead center of the top panel if at all possible.  I'm thinking this is the best position to get accurate/quick readings on the heading and not have to worry about the Y or Z axis.

Some things will be easy enough.  See the odd shape at the top of the picture?  That is the base plate for the PIXY pan/tilt module.  It is pretty big, takes up nearly the front half of the top deck.  That little board right below the PIXY is the compass. My challenge here is fitting that right in the middle of the top deck. Not sure how to mount it now that my plan A fell flat.

Plan A

I found this circuit boards at MicroCenter that I thought was perfect, put some sockets on the board, some pins that match so we can attach wires, plug in the circuit boards, mount the blank board on the top deck, and viola, done.  NOT SO FAST!

Here is what I laid out.  I _was_ going to use this super nice little board to mount my tough to mount circuits. I used 1/2 of the board for the compass and the other 1/2 for the Bluetooth module.  Perfect!

not.

one GIANT short circuit

Luckily, I decided to test out my little invention before committing pins to the bluetooth and compass boards. As with almost everything else in this hobby, this board does not come with documentation.

Good for Power Bus

Turns out that each row of pins is connected, you are supposed to use this as a power/ground bus (luckily for me, I was planning that later). Basically what I created was one big giant SHORT CIRCUIT!  So, if you find yourself at MicroCenter and see this item, unless you want a power bus, forget about it.

Now I have to figure out a plan B for mounting bluetooth and compass.  Those holes in the compass module are extremely small, a #4 screw wont fit, I need to find a #3 screw of some sort. Back to Lowes for ideas.  Lowes has some nylon screws, but they only go down to #8, way to big.  I can't find a #3-40 tap, anywhere locally.... so I'll have to drill holes and use nuts.  I might even use 2 sided tape if I can't find another solution.

I'll let you know what I figure out in the next post.  Sorry all.

Post #6: Completing the bottom deck

Progress!  Finally seeing the light at the end of this very long tunnel.  I've got the middle layer complete, everything mounted and wired.  I even tested each of the modules to make sure things are still working.

Where I got to on Wednesday

I started out where I left off on Tuesday. In this picture on the left, you can see that I was able to drill/tap the holes for the power conditioner board.  I also remounted the motors, side and back panels pulling the wires out of the way.   The front panel, when mounted is really tight to get wires installed, so I left it off for now, it is laying at the front of the bot.

4 squares of 2 sided tape

tie wrap, anchor, existing holes

The battery wasn't as hard to mount as I thought.  I just put 4 little squares of 2 sided tape on the corners and a tie wrap anchor on the top, then ran a long tie wrap through existing holes in the platform.

These next two pics show the final state of the lower level.  I took a pencil and wrapped the wires around it to give me plenty of length to move them around if I need to.  Also, look at all the extra space for a bigger battery down the road, plus, the wires are long enough to reach the terminals on whatever battery we eventually put in there.  Also, having the wiring looped around lets me remove side panels if I need to with enough wiring to give me room to do what I need to.

The front panel is really crowded and I didn't have a good premade cable to plug into the 6 necessary pins on the motor controller (ENA, IN1, IN2, IN3, IN4, ENB).  So I picked different color jumper wires and thread them through some shrink wrap to keep them all together.  To remember which wire is on which pin, I used the resistor color code pattern (rainbow). "ROYGBIV", so my wiring colors from left to right are Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue then White.  Easy way to remember which is on which pin when I go wire this thing up to the Arduino.

One more little thing I did, on the DC to DC converter, just to make sure my adjusting resistor doesn't move around by accident, I put a little dollup of  silicon on it, when it dries it should prevent it from moving.  Checking to make sure it stays at 7.2 volts, it was around 7.18, so tuned it up a bit.

Put the fuses in, turned on switches, checked voltages, all looks good.  This weekend, the top level and the fun stuff, the Arduino, Compass, Bluetooth and of course the PIXY!

Soon I'll be writing about the software, what I'm better at than manufacturing :).

Stay tuned.

Post #5: The Build Continues

My Proposed Layout for the bottom shelf

Monday and Tuesday, just not enough time in the day.  I took the platform apart so I can start laying out the mid layer boards.  I'm planning on the battery, the DC-DC Converter, the Motor Controller and my power conditioning board, all squeezed on the middle layer.  I'm hoping to keep enough room for a bigger battery some day, who knows what they will dream up at the school to put on this little bot, all taking power, so my little 1.3Ah battery may not be enough some day.  Unfortunately, all the parts I want to put on this layer are so big... but if this is all the space I have, so be it.  I actually laid out the parts, marked the holes and started drilling, even tapped a few!  But it got late so had to put it aside for the evening, too many season premiers starting :).

MISTAKE: forgot to account for assembly screws

The next day, having slept on this layout overnight, I decided to try something different. The side walls should be big enough to hold the two smaller boards, so this is what I did.  I now have some small unused holes in the bottom platform, but no big deal, they won't hurt anything. So today I laid out the smaller PCB's on the side panels and didn't forget to also drill/tap in the IR sensors for the front and back panel.  MISTAKE: I didn't account for the screws that hold the platform together, so I had to dremel out one of my nylon standoffs to make room for it (see pic).  Freeing up all that space where the 2 smaller boards are on the lower shelf will make lots of room for a bigger battery.

Front panel

Inside of Front panel

For the front panel, I chose to put the motor controller (the pic on the right).  If I place it near the top of the panel, that heat sink will fit nicely over top of my power conditioner board.  On the opposite side (the outside of the bot) I mounted an IR distance sensor, you can see the wires coming through a hole I drilled under the motor controller.

These PCB's can be pretty tall, so I did not mount one on the back riser as it would rob some space available for the bigger battery.

If you remember from this weekend, the left side of the robot has the power switches/fuses and power jack, so that leaves the right side of the robot for the DC-DC Converter.  You can see that in the MISTAKE picture above.  I wish I accounted for the mounting hole, would have saved me some time with the dremel tool, oh well.  It works.

Drill and Tap set

Electricians Tool (cuts screws too)

Takes quite a bit of time to drill the holes just perfectly (a small drill press from Harbor Freight is coming in handy to get the holes as close to perfect as possible.  You have a little wiggle room, but not much, the mounting holes on these PCB's are so small.  I picked up a drill and tap set from Lowes yesterday to make the tapping easy.  To keep your screws from standing out on the other side of your platform, an electricians tool comes in real handy to cut the screws down to size!

mark the adjusting resitor

adjust to 7.2v and test

Now that these little guys are mounted, we better check them and make sure we didn't do anything bad to them during the mounting process.  Before mounting the DC-DC Converter, I set it up to output about 7.2 volts (just a bit higher than the 7 needed to allow the onboard voltage regulator on the Arduino to work.  Once set up, I took a little marker and marked the variable resistor so I know where it is supposed to be.  After mounting, I tested it again, sure enough, the voltage was a bit low, so adjusted it back into shape.

Motor Controller

I also hooked up the motor controller and tried to figure out what the jumpers do.  There is an ENA (2) and ENB (1) jumper that leads to the 5 volt copper trace. We are going to take this jumper off and drive these pins with a PWM output from the Arduino to allow us to change the speed of the motor. There is another jumper (3) on the board, tracing and experimenting, I found out that it feeds the incoming 12 volts to the onbard voltage regulator that converts it to 5 volts.  This board won't use much current so we just may allow the regulator here to keep working instead of feeding 5 volts from the Arduino, saves me a wire too.  After hooking it up to 12 volts and using the onboard 5 volts to pull pins high, I verified that I got +12 and -12 on the motor hookups depending on which pin I pulled high.  Good to go, both motor controllers are working properly.

Now to finish up the bottom shelf.... work for Wednesday.... (PS, i'm going to have to figure out what the red/white/black wires do on the IR sensors, nothing comes with documentation!).

Post #4: The Build Begins

The day has finally arrived, I've begun!  Hopefully, someone can use these pages to learn about robotics while I'm learning, then making their own bot and making it better!  Here we go!

A lot of parts to go on that little board!

First, lets work on the power conditioning circuit.  I've spent most of Saturday putting this little thing together.  I have the start of the drawing on Post #2, I pretty much stuck to that initial drawing and built the circuit on the Radio Shack prototyping board.

Here you can see all of the parts I have to try and squeeze on this little prototyping board.  Initially I was thinking I would be able to break that prototyping board in half and use it for other parts, but that dream died when I saw the size of those 4700uF caps! The 100mH RF Choke was also bigger than I anticipated, I was pretty lucky to squeeze all of these components on the full size prototype board as it was!

Problem 1.... header does't fit

problem solved

Well, lets begin.  First up, first problem. The holes on the board don't fit my screw terminals . I wanted to to make it as plug and play as possible, so I thought these terminals would be useful.... Out comes the drill bit to make the holes bigger and make them fit! (note, I lost my drill bit, How could I lose it after I just used it? ugh).

Parts Laid Out

Start Soldering

Now that this problem is solved (just a minor one), time to start locating the pieces parts and see if I can make things fit. After some experimenting (OK, a lot of experimenting), I figured out a combination of locations that keep my mounting holes free and fit everything on.  On the right you can see how I finally got everything to fit, on the left, the work to solder them in.

Finished Power Conditioner

Power Conditioner Soldering

Wherever possible, I used the leads of the each component and bent them down to touch the next component using the leads as my copper traces, so to speak.  I had to add a jumper wire or two in order to get things completely hooked up, but overall, pretty easy.  Just be patient with your soldering, keep a clean soldering tip (I just used a folded/wet paper towel) and don't spend too much time on each point, just touch, solder and back off.  The black line in the picture above left is just me tracing my ground around the board to make sure I didn't solder it to the hot and avoid a disaster.

Power Conditioner is holding a charge!

Now, how to test this thing?  Putting an ohmmeter across the + and - isn't going to do any good.  All of these capacitors are just going to draw all the current out of your meter and make it look like a shorted circuit.  So, what to do.... Well, I took a risk.  I got out the battery I, tied some wires onto the + and - and then touched them to + and - on my little board.  I got a spark the first time (the Capacitors needed charging), but the second time, no spark.  That is a good sign.  If everything is as it should be, the board should hold charge for quite some time.  Lets see.... yep!    I'm done for today!  It's been a long Saturday so far :).

Day 2, Still 10V!

Sunday, a new day.  Today I just wanted to make sure my little creation from yesterday is still good.  Putting the voltmeter on, sure enough, I still have charge from yesterday.  After about 24 hours my little board has lost only 2 volts!  OK, I 'm thinking this board is good to go.  Now, on to the next.

Add Caps to your Motors

Another source of noise in any device with motors, is, well, the motors!  It is best to get capacitors down as near the motor as you can, trap the noise at the source. My motors have plastic covers on the back so have no idea if they came with caps or not.  Opening them up, no, they don't.  So, adding them to each motor.  Take off the back, solder on a cap so that it doesn't interfere with the cover, put the cover back on and test.  done. I didn't grab a pic with the caps soldered on, but you can see it laying there.  I used some wire insulation around the leads so they don't short out with the motor case when the plastic cover is put back on, but other than that, no biggy here.

Now to begin mounting the power peripherals, the switches to turn on main power, to disconnect the motors with another switch and the power jack so we can charge our little creation.  I arbitrarily chose the left hand side of the robot, just seemed natural.  I took off the side, measured things out, placed my fuses with two sided tape and tapped a hole for a screw in the middle.

Early Power Control Panel

Power Control Panel (inside)

 On the left here, you can see I've already mounted my fuse holders (one for charging, one for the main circuit).  Once those are on, I was able to measure and drill holes for my motor switch, main switch and power jack.  On the right, the two fuse holders are at the bottom, the main switch is on the left and the motor switch is on the right.

Inside of Power Control Side Panel

Next, have to wire things up.  This next pic shows how I pull a lead from the one of the fuses (the other side goes to the battery) to one throw of the switch, the center pole goes out to the power conditioner circuit I built above (the red wire coming off the center of the switch). Notice also the 2 resistors wired in parallel from the opposite throw to ground.  This will drain the capacitors through 205 ohms to ground when the main switch is in the OFF position. The power jack is in the middle, I pulled the + (center) from and ran it to one end of the other fuse.  This fuse will be the charging fuse to the battery.  In case anything goes wrong, this fuse should save our battery/charger.  On the right, I pulled 2 red wires off a throw and pole of that motor switch.  One wire will come from my power conditioner circuit, the other will go to V+ of the motor circuit.

Outside of Power Control Panel

After drilling, tapping, mounting and soldering, here is the finished product for the side panel. Also, just to keep my documentation up to date, I've updated my schematic to better match the as built.  Some experimenting showed that 5K resistor was too high to drain the caps very fast, so I lowered it to 205 ohms and that seems do draw down the caps a lot faster.

Creeper Bot Schematic Rev 2

All done with my Sunday.. just have to write my blog entry :).  Please note, this will take more time than you plan for it to take!  Especially if this is your first robot build.  You end up going to stores looking for parts alot.  You get some parts, don't like them, get other parts... You really don't know what you want until you try it out.  My intention is to record my learning curve here so that if you want to undertake this project, you can follow my pics and posts and get some better ideas for your build. Enjoy! :)

Post #3: Timeout - Students are progressing FAST

The Competition Bots (early look)

Just a quick break from the Creeper Bot to update everyone on the progress of the competition robots.

Again, I feel pretty helpless, these students are so adept at building their bots, I feel so out of my element! For example, I was concerned about a 3 gear setup (to offset one motor from another) from a 2 gear ratio on the other side of a linked part. Turns out, as I was educated properly :), the idler gear doesn't matter, and on my way home I thought about it, sure enough....

Left Drive	Right Drive
drive gear = 5 teeth
idler gear = 20 teeth	drive gear 1 = 5 teeth
load gear = 30 teeth	load gear = 30 teeth
5/20 * 20/30 = 5/30	5/30

I can't wait till we get to something I can help with LOL.

Anyway, I was able to get some pics of some of two of the robots under way. These two are starting to take shape, the third one is really close and I'll get a shot of that next week. This beauty is quite a mechanical engineering project.  The tower on the right has a chain snaking through it driven by 4 motors. Drive the chain one direction, the sliders rise up, drive the chain the other and they are drawn down. This looks like it has a lot of promise!


This second shot is the robot I mentioned in Post #1 with with the wheels mounted in a unique way. This will allow it to move sideways, maybe saving time turning. Run it up to the wall, slide it sideways until you are over the post, set the cube on the post. This has good promise too, I like it since it is unique. This robot shares the same lifting scenario with the third robot in the club, a lever (not yet complete). There are examples of bots like this on youtube that look like they get a nice advantage from the strafing motion they are capable of.
One more thing.  Notice those blue cubes over on the right?  They are way bigger than any of the pictures or video's make them appear.  This is what these robots have to lift and place on a post, won't be easy!

Back to the creeper:

Status of Parts

Of course the first part I need is the last to arrive. I have one more part I'm waiting on to get started (well, 2, the RF Chokes are in the same shipment). I need to build that noise isolation circuit and am waiting on the prototype board.  I could buy one at Radio Shack, but since I already ordered it, i'll just wait.  It shipped, should be here by the end of the week.

Also, ordering this bluetooth adapter tonight, it is a bit more expensive than others you can get on Amazon, but this one comes with a bit more support, documentation and libraries to make it easier to work with.  I'm going to be connecting to it from Android which means I have to keep my baud rate at 9600, but in the future when the club wants to do more with it, the baud rate is easily changed using software up to 115200, something cheaper modules can do only if you can figure out how.  Plus, adafruit has some great products and super support, I don't mind supporting them (they are supporting me with great documenation!)  [note: Apple does not allow their devices to talk SPP with bluetooth, so anyone with the Apple, you won't be able to talk to the robot :( with your new Iphone 6's.... ]

Stay Tuned!  This is fun!

Post #2: Parts is Parts

The creeper bot project...... Rounding up the parts.

VIDEO PROCESSING

The first step was of course figuring out how to deal with the image data and detect a "person" to track.  After finding that PIXY the wheels started spinning, now to put this little jewel on a platform that is worthy of it!

MOBILE PLATFORM

I've searched and searched.  I found lots of platforms, all had their advantages/disadvantages.  I started out looking for a 4 wheel drive platform, I don't know why, I just thought it would be cool.  What I soon realized about robotic mobile platforms is that they are expensive, especially ones with 4 motors!  In other words, motors are expensive if you get nice geared ones.

Amazon, RobotShop and DFRobots had some good choices, but I really didn't want to spend over $100 on a platform.  It wasn't long till I exhausted Google and opened up my search criteria to 2 wheel drive platforms (but still with 4 wheels), and that led me to 2 wheeled platforms with a caster.

Bingo, that was the key.  I wasn't too keen on the smaller plastic platforms, I can see this thing roaming around the hallways of a high school and wanted something a bit more substantial but not bank breaking.  Finally, after hours of hunting, I turned to EBAY, and I'm glad I did.  Search for "Robot Platform" and you get all kinds of choices at reasonable prices.

I was looking for one that was all metal, big enough to mount my PIXY, sensors, arduino and everything else I needed to make this thing move and search.  I finally settled on this great little platform from a seller I would recommend.

You may choose something different depending on your need, but I think this is perfect.  The platform is 7 inches wide like the drawing shows, plenty of room for a 4 inch Arduino Mega 2560, the PIXY and the pan/tilt at the front, plus other things I need.

The Middle platform looks perfect for a battery, the motor controller (which the Ebay seller throws in with the platform!), some signal conditioning circuitry, a DC to DC Voltage converter (the motors are 12 volts, the Arduino and the Pixy are 5 volts), plus more.

POWER

After the platform, now the power.  I started with the best, Lithium Ion (and Lithium Polymer).  Super expensive!  I was looking for something with pretty good power ratings since this platform looked pretty heavy and could burn through batteries pretty fast.  After many hours, I gave up, the cost was just too expensive.  So I began looking at Nickel Metal Hydride, lower prices, but still more than I wanted to pay for the amp hours I wanted.  I even looked at drill batteries/chargers... I thought I could buy 2 chargers, take one apart and mount it to the platform so all you would need to do is drop in a battery and go.... but the chargers were more expensive than the batteries.

I finally settled on the battery that the seller of the platform recommended, and it is perfect.  It is a 1.3 ampHour sealed lead acid battery that fits perfect in the middle layer.  I could have gone with a bigger battery, and I still might depending on how long this one lasts in operation, but this one will get me started. (don't forget the battery charger too!).  SOURCE: www.batterymart.com

This little battery fits perfectly in the middle platform, it is 2" high, less than 4" long and just over 1.5" wide.

The nice thing about SLA (Sealed Lead Acid) batteries is you can lay them on their side if you like.  So if this little battery doesn't cut it, I can step up to the next battery size, lay it on the side and fit it in the middle platform.

5 Volts from 12 Volts

The reason for the 12 volt battery is the motors.  The motors included in the platform look pretty solid -and- they are, plus, they are 12 volts, hence .... Now, the Arduino which I plan to use can accept 12 volts, it has an on board voltage regulator to convert the 12 to the 5 volts it needs, but.... we are in the 2000 "teens" now, we can do better :).  Voltage regulators can get us down to 5, but burn wattage in heat to do it.  On the other hand, DC to DC converters are available now that are upwards of 90% efficient in converting one voltage to another.  So off to the internet......  This part wasn't too tough to find, I ended up at RobotShop.com and found a 25W DC to DC converter.  The key here is to cut the 12V down to 7V and feed that in to the Arduino, this gives the onboard regulator a little bit to do regulating the voltage down to 5 and also letting it create the 3.3V onboard as well.

Noise Isolation

Any time you mix motors and computers you are asking for trouble.  So, just to avoid trouble... off to Radio Shack to get some component parts to create a noise isolating circuit to give the Arduino its own path to power, and the motors a different path.  A simple power conditioning circuit put together with a Radio Shack prototyping square, caps and inductors (as of this writing, this isn't built, comments welcome)

I've added a double pole/double throw switch from the battery so that we can drain the capacitors through a 5K resistor when we turn the bot off, this speeds up the shutdown of our Arduino, otherwise, it will run off all of those capacitors for a while, something we don't really want.  You might think the motors will drain those caps pretty fast, but what if they aren't running....

I've also added a second switch, one for the motors.  This allows us to keep the motors off while we play with the Arduino, programming, checking the camera, training the camera, etc.  If I have the time, I may add led's to the motor outputs (or some kind of indication) so while motors are off, I know what the Arduino is outputting for the motors, forward, backward, spin, whatever.  I haven't thought that through yet.

NOTE: The drawing above, i used TinyCad, works pretty good!  It took me a tiny bit of time to figure out the nuances of it, but overall i'm quite happy with it.  Plus, it has a template for my Arduino Mega 2560!  I'll be able to document the pin hookups for posterity!

Pieces Parts

We need things like nylon standoffs (for the Arduino, those mounting holes are tiny), some brass standoffs, wire wraps, wire wrap tie downs, etc.  These I went to Home Depot, MicroCenter and Radio Shack to assemble some of these things.  You really don't know what works and doesn't until you get all your parts together, lay them out on your platform, and start figuring.  We'll get more into what I use when I actually mount.

Grove Mega Shield

Some things I did buy ahead of time are wire jumpers, grove cables, a grove shield for the mega.  All of these things from RobotShop and I expect this will help me try things out before wiring them up permanent.  I like the plug and play aspect of the Grove Shield.

Motor Controller

One more part I mentioned earlier, the Motor Controller.  This little circuit lets your Arduino switch 12v to the motors.  Based on your hookup, you can drive your motors forward and backward, and you can vary the speed by sending a PWM output from your Arduino to the Enable pin for the motor.  This little circuit (called an H bridge) came with the platform.



Also, one weakness of the motors on this particular mobile platform is that the motors don't have encoders.  You really are flying (driving) blind if you don't have any feedback, i.e. speed sensors for each motor.  If one motor is slightly different and moves slightly faster than the other, you won't be going in a straight line. The motors also don't have the ability to add an encoder, so instead of dealing with encoders on the wheels, i decided on a compass module instead.  Now, I can set a heading, and if i start swerving off of my chosen direction, I can adjust.

 I don't want my little creation here to run into walls, so a couple of 10cm-80cm infrared range detectors would come in handy.  A weekness of these sensors is that within the minimum distance, you don't know if if you are too close or too far away, but I think I can deal with that in software.

Also, I've decided to go for it when it comes to the Bluetooth adapter.  I found a really cool free android app on the google playstore here... This looks like it will fit the bill nicely.  I can see us driving the bot into an area with people to search, then setting it free.  I think we can do it with this app and a bit of programming.  I haven't found the bluetooth adapter yet, but they are plentiful, i'll find one soon and post it here.

Almost all of the parts are in now, by the end of this week I should have all the major expensive pieces.  Now for the construction :)

Next post: Drill/Tap/Mount

Post #1: Creeper Bot!

I started volunteering at one of our local high schools in their Robotics Club!  What a great program this is.  A bunch of students getting together to create competition robots, not the destroy your opponent type robots, but ones that compete in a task based scenario.  They are arranged in 3 groups, each creating their own style to create a robot to compete in this arena:

http://www.vexrobotics.com/wiki/Skyrise

Your robot gets an "autonomous" period where it is to take your colored cubes and drop them on the posts.  Afterwards, you get a remote control time period to finish the job.  Pretty cool!

Each team is creating something different, 2 teams have a traditional drive system (two powered wheels in the back, two omniwheels in the front) while the third team is using 4 drive wheels, all omni, giving them the ability to move sideways!

As far as picking up those squares in the arena, two teams are using something like a fork on the end of a lever while the third team is using this telescoping lifting device that goes straight up an down.

They use the vex robotic systems.  I've never seen this setup before, it looks like a nice package to allow the students to focus on the mechanical aspects of their robots more than the electronic part.   It is a jumpstart on the whole process.  Basic motors, gears, sprockets, metal parts that can be bolted together in any number of ways to solve the mission: Get those cubes stacked on the posts!

I'm there to help, but to be perfectly honest, I'm not helping much, I'm probably more in the way at the moment than helpful.  These students are pretty adept at building their robots, and the electrical components, well, VEX takes care of that.... so....  Hopefully I can be more helpful when it comes to the programming, something I'm good at!

So I'm looking to be of some use.  I know that when the competition rolls around, I'll be able to jump in and help out, but to avoid feeling totally helpless at this point, I jumped on an idea they started to work on last year, the "creeper bot".

Creeper Bot: wander around looking for someone to focus on, once locked on.... follow them around!

So much can be done with this.... :)  This looks like a perfect way for me to get into robotics, put my electrical engineering degree and software experience to work, make something cool and hopefully be able to introduce the group to more of an electronics spin to the robotics world (the mechanical stuff is cool and a good first step, but without the electronics behind it....nothing moves!)

But first, how to lock on to a person?  This is what I thought was the hardest part!  This requires video analysis, not something a simple beaglebone, raspberry pi, udoo and especially an arduino is capable of doing, or doing very well.  After many hours of research, I ran across this REALLY COOL product (which I subsequently purchased on Amazon.com!)  Last year when they were working on the creeper bot, this product didn't exist!  It just hit Amazon shelves in March of 2014!  Perfect timing.

http://charmedlabs.com/default/?p=384

This little jewel started out as a Kickstarter (follow that link, you won't be sorry).  Kickstarter is a website where inventors can put out an idea, say how much it will cost to create, then ask for crowd sourced funding.  These folks asked for a crowd sourcing of $25,000 and got $274,352!  The project was funded in September of 2013 and is now for sale on Amazon (link above).

Anyway, this is the perfect solution for the clubs "creeper bot" project.  You can train it to look for a color or a pattern of colors.  I can see you being able to train it to look for yellow on blue (yellow shirt and blue jeans), have it hunt around until it finds someone wearing a yellow shirt and blue jeans, then lock on!

Now the project has a chance!  This is the heart, add to it an Arduino, a mobile platform, some electronics to manage power, noise, and a battery, sensors so we don't run into walls... now we have something!

There are a couple of examples of using the PIXY already out there, here and here.

Whats different with the creeper bot?  Everyone else is tracking little toys or balls, we are going to try and track a person!  I think we can do it based on everything I've seen so far.

I figure if I build it then donate it to the club with all the basics working.... The students can learn some electronics, some c++ programming all on a platform that would be fun to learn on.  Plus, they can then come along later and add things like:

• Sound (when focused on someone...when it backs up it goes beep beep beep)
• Lighting (I can see LED's that are yellow when searching, red when LOCKED ON!)
• Spot Light, what better way to tell someone they are special! :)
• Obstacle Avoidance (no new parts, just fancy programming)
• Remote Control with your Android phone: I would like this thing to be "driven" by an operator into an area, then turned over to the autonomous programming to find our person of interest.  We could "drive" it from our android phones using bluetooth.
• the possibilities are endless!

Next post: Rounding up the parts.... parts is parts.....