Rover 5 test

Finally, I got to test out the controller and motors. I had some problems with the motors stalling at first; it would seem that this revision of the controller is not entirely compatible with the motors. Direction was reversed and also opposite on the same side; leaving me with an if-else block of code to make the desired movement.

Heres a short video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhAFjcacjHo

Last post for a week or so, moving to new location!

So we are moving into a new apartment on Tuesday, so robot building and blogging will be suspended to sometime next week, when all has settled down. Here's some more pictures of the Rover 5 project and some pictures and links.

Update: 01-11-12: Some corrections

Resistor calculator (at http://www.1728.org/)
Michaels electronics lessons

I think I am going to attach this breadboard to this
Hoist/Metal Elements frame I came up with.

Setting up a frame for attaching various stuff.

Latest shipment from Robonor.no:
2000x resistor package
200x capacitor package
10x diodes (not pictured)
Protoboard
Standoffs
Screws
20x F/F cables

So far, the main parts of the robot is:

• 4-motor Rover 5 with encoders
• Dagu 4 channel 2.5A controller (credits to Dev Donkey for good pictures of wiring and setup)
• Arduino Mega ADK with TX to an Arduino Uno R3 (slave)
• Samsung Galaxy S2 with CM9 (planning to get some pan/tilt kits to mount this as a HD camera as well using it for it's CPU power & WiFi/BT)
• Dagu AREXX IR compound eye
• Maxbotix LV EZ1 ultra sound sonar (good tutorial here) on a separate 5v circuit for minimum interference. I made a thread on the Sparkfun forum, lots of input there. Thanks guys!
• Linear temperature sensor + 2 simple temp sensors
• 16x2 LCD
• 128x64 LCD on separate 9v course (draws quite a bit of power, trying to avoid dip)
• Humidity sensor
• Dew point sensor
• 2x QRD1114 phototransistors (for rear proximity) (tutorial, same page as EZ1)
• 2x IR RX/TX transmitters
• 2x Dual channel 2A motor controllers
• Pan/tilt arm
• 2x mini breadboards, one of them mainly for buttons to control OS
• DFRobot Protoboard

Most of it has been up and running at some point, I am working on the OS to control everything. Lots of code to organize.

I'm trying to build some form of exoskeleton around
fragile parts, like the LCD. It's not that easy, considering
the pan/tilt arm has quite a bit of turning range and
will easily crash into something if the controlling code
has bugs!

Here you can see the Dagu controller mounted beneath the servo too,
as well as IR compound eyes mounted in front.

Top view. Adding more rails and brackets to further extend
mountability.