Working with Rover 5 and the top plate

Helping hand is configured as low as possible...

...low enough to keep a card in position over a 10 standoff

Tape over reserved holes, these are for mounting on the Rover

Now basically just move and twist whatever you want to mount and
have something that shines from behind so the holes will light up.
Tape will cover holes you can't use! 

So here's a motor controller, an Uno,a Mega and the whole baseblate + breadboard
mounted on a Rover 5

Android Mega ADK test and design work concept

Here's some stills from booting up the CM9 modded S2 with an DFrobot Android Mega ADK (2560)

Haven't tested it yet, just installed the driver so far.
It appears to work and blinks green on boot and reset.

Rooted Galaxy S2

DFrobot 2A dual motor controller

Cyanogen 9/4.0.4 S2 with a 2GB SDcard

Robot top plate mounted on Rover 5 on some stand+offs

The shape of things to come....

Bad DFrobot 2A Dual Controller

When it was time to mount find a place to mount the spacers to attach my new 2nd controller, I discover it's a defect one that is cleary thrown together in a hurry. I have mailed my retailer for a response :D

All the explainations are on the album on http://imgur.com/a/M1Uh4

The good news is that some guy on the sparkfun forum says i'm probably right on the wiring setup as long as the controllers can take the required 2.5A. These are rated for 2A but my retailer recommended me these. I have already ordered the Dagu board. When that arrives, I have other plans for these controllers. (Probably for eye/sensor array arms or grabbing mechanisms ?)

Plans for dual controller Rover5

So this is how I plan to wire the 2x dual motor controllers. It might not work, still discussing this on forum.sparkfun.com. No one has replied yet :/

I am using two of these with an Uno, which should be fine since I'm not going to do step counting.

DFRobot 4.8-46V, 2A Dual Motor Controller

Update on Rover 5 project

Got some new wires, a "Helping Hand" and a 2A motor controller today. Which means I have the parts I need to get the Rover running on all 4 motors according to Robonor.no who recommended these two. I am going to need to get a some standoffs and screws to mount the Arduino and the two motor controllers. Here's some pic for today:

Rover5 with top plate mounted. I have no idea if i did this the right
way, but atleast it sits there. I have no idea how one are supposed to
get a servo motor in that hole, the battery pack is impossible to get
far enough down.

2A motor controller already hooked with the needed wires

Pan&tilt kit

Helping Hand, Comes prebuilt, very... handy..

Sortiment of screws and standoffs

Robot hobbyist laboratory

Heres's some pics of my new lab. Had to make a fitting space to build the robot !

Laptop dedicated to Arduino, with appropiate tools.
Multimeter, soldering, and about anything else need  to tinker!

Assembling Rover 5

Rover5 inside view, 6xAA battery pack and steppers

Sparkfun LCD 09351 and some LEDs

Hooked up the Sparkfun LCD. It is unflashed but for now it will have to do!

Some LED flashing too ;D

Arduino robot project

10/10/12

With the helpful guys at Robonor.no, I've ordered the following parts for my project:

Arrived in the mail today, UNO R3 from Robonor

• Sparkfun Inventor's Kit for Arduino
• Arduino Beginner Tool Kit Robonor (Soldering kit)
• Digital Multimeter Electrical Meter DT 9205A
• Battery pack - 4xAA
• Serial Enabled 16x2 LCD - Black on Green 5V

Dagu 4 motor controller is on it's way from England!

I will eventually get the Rover5 4-engined robot, but as the Dagu controller card is hard to get, I have to put this on hold for a while. At the moment, I will have enough to do by going trough the basics! When the Rover is in place, I will get an Mega ADK board for my Android phone to utilize all the sensors.



I have ordered the Dagu controller from the UK along with an IR compund eye from RoboSavvy. I'll slip right under the 20 pound tax limit! This could take a cool 2 months 4 weeks though. (Seems he could speed it up a bit!?

Meanwhile,I'll get to program the Arduino controller and hooking up the LCD display.
Fun times!

Serial Enabled 16x2 LCD - Black on Green 5V

11/10/12

Got an old laptop from a friend for fixing his new one and installing games and a 'safe' browsing environment. Not too bad either, Dual core AMD Turion with 2 gigs and 256 mb shared gfx memory. Will probably install XP in this to use all the easily available Arduino tools, and run Linux in a VM to run electronics software.

Postal service reports that the package has been received and will probably end up here tomorrow afternoon :)

13/10/12

Picked up package today, everything was included as far as I can tell, except the 3-pin serial LCD, but i actually got a much better LCD with a mounted backpack, so this should be a serious upgrade! Thanks Robonor! Quick delivery too!

Graphic LCD Serial Backpack

Serial Graphic LCD 128x64

First testing footage

From the Circ-02 tutorial with 8 leds

Well, cannot complain, everything worked as expected!

14/10/12

Some connectors was badly soldered from the factory. Fixed that and now it should work. Pixels was all over the screen.

Some error in the manual it seems. It won't work from the 5.5v line, have to use Vin. Here you can see the Sparkfun icon!

Some software I probably need:
http://www.atmel.com/tools/AVR32STUDIO2_6.aspx