Monday, March 15, 2010

Yet another Cheap Robot

Lately I've been reading about Arduino's controlling the ever faithful Rumble Bots. They don't fight any more, they just run around under autonomous control.

Bot Bodies - Rumble Bot


In the early days (last year?) I was playing around with wheels and gears and all sorts of things when I stumbled upon an old Rumble Bot. I had to look 'em up because they weren't selling new ones... They have a card reader built in and all kinds of things that would make them a fun Robot.

I was just concentrating on using the body for batteries motors and gears when I saw Deans article via Make magazine. Dean used Arduino, I had used picAxe. When I added up the costs, I discovered Deans Arduino powered unit cost more than mine, so I thought I'd dig out the old videos and put this thing up as a proper project. So here it is on the CwhatIcanDo website complete with videos and step by step overview so you can build one too...

Dean's arduino cost $30
His Ping unit costs $30

Doing the same thing but replacing even the Motherboard means:
08m (if you want to be fancy) $4
08 motor controller board $15
Sharp IR detector unit $15

You can use the upper part of the body like Dean. One cool thing, Dean put touch feelers in the arms of his last conversion, it's a great idea. Use the rear switch already mounted on most models for detecting objects when backing up too!

CwhatIcanDo Projects