Security Bot 2

After completing my first Security Bot, I had come across the DFRobot 4WD platform. Once viewing some projects made with it, I was inspired for my second creation. This time around I decided to cram as many sensors into it as possible. My goal was to make this my main robot that I could continually expand upon.

I started ordering parts in January mostly from my three favorite sites. Sparkfun, Adadruit, and now DFRobot and DSS Circuits.  I also a ordered a Arduino Mega Protoshield from NKC Electronics. It turns out Adadruit sells the same board. I decided I wanted to make this one more permanent and use the protoshield and solder everything with header connections for the sensors. This makes it much cleaner and easily disassembled.


I had a few parts already and some credit from SparkFun's free day so I decided to build it as a 2nd robot instead of a replacement of SBot 1. Having two robot leaves for some interesting possibilities later.

In order to assemble a working prototype I ended up having to borrow parts form the SBot 1 (Security Robot 1 and therefore it was inoperable for awhile. I borrowed the XBee radio, battery, and step-up converter.

I decided to use the XBee since it is faster at connecting during development. I already have a WiFi Shield from DFRobot ready to swap in soon.

Long story short, I had some power issues and ended up having to have two power systems and therefore that is why I had to borrow parts from SBot 1. During development I saw that Adafruit had some new batteries that can hold more capacity which can handle more current. So I ordered two of them which freed up the others for SBot 1, plus a spare for future projects. I love the two battery setup and things are much smoother with the new Lithium-Ion cobalt batteries. I decided I wanted to have SBot 1 running again since it makes for a great web controlled, long battery life robot. I made one more order from SparkFun for a step-up booster and a few other parts for inventory. I had a hard time finding a step-up that can handle more than an Amp. The SparkFun step-up will have to work for now since it is just enough that can sometimes power the camera. The original step-ups were from an eBay seller in India but they no longer have them listed. I might have to contact him again or design my own for my final design. With the step-up along with the WiFi Shield, SBot 1 is back in service. Later I will swap the radios.

As ideas come to mind and once I add new features to SBot 2, I will be sure to post them here. The last few recent upgrades other than the batteries were two I2C Fuel Gauges from DSS Circuits and a Real Time Clock from SparkFun.

The reason for the RTC came about in trying to optimize SBot 2 to poll the distance sensors faster. I realized some of the sensors don't need to update every cycle. So after a lot of learning and struggling I got the RTC working where it triggers an interrupt every minute to update the non essential sensors. This sped up polling a lot. The RTC will allow for other possibilities down the road as well.

Originally I was going to use voltage dividers to monitor the batteries like I did with SBot 1. For some reason on SBot 2, they were way off and pretty much useless. I think it had to do with having two power systems and trying to monitor them both from the MCU. I came across an article from Hack-A-Day that lead me to DSS Circuits. This site is great as they bring some of the newer IC's to the DIYer. Prefect he has a Fuel Gauge that solves my problem. They are I2C and return a percentage of the batter left. I ordered three of them, two for SBot 2 and one for SBot 1, which I haven't installed yet.

I did run into a problem with being unable to change the I2C address on the Fuel Gauge which until now I had to use a soft I2C. Today, DSS Circuits posted a new product to multiplex I2C devices. Perfect!


Now onto the good stuff...

Here are a list of parts that I have used so far (well, most of the parts):

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First order of parts from DFRobot.com. 4WD platform, IR switches, IR distanace sensors, line sensors, Ultrasonic sensor, WiFi Shield, pan/tilt brackets/servos, and miscellaneous cables and brackets.

DFRobot 4WD Robot Platform. Still need to order wheel encoders.

Order from SparkFun which I used my free money from Free day. Includes SpeakJet/TTS/Speakers, LCD, battery, serial motor controller, ICSP pocket programmer, and Arduino Mega 2560.

NKC Electronics Mega Protoshield Kit and some extra hookup wire.

Fuel Gauges from DSS Circuits.













Here are some pictures of the build and how it looks now. (Final pictures and videos to come)

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Testing the Voice Shield with TTS soldered on already.

Internals of the base with original battery, serial motor controller, Adafruit charger and 4 DC motors.

Assembled robot base.

 Completed protoshield. I have added to it since.
Shows the 5v regulator from Polulu and TIP120 to control power to the camera. The top left is the Wii Nunchuck connection and the bottom is a MEMS microphone.








Bottom side of protoshield. I tried to make it as clean as possible.I kind of just designed it as I added to it. I wanted to make sure that everything can be disconnected for easy modification and repair.

Top level of robot during testing. Showing the original microphone I was using and the Temp/Humidity sensor the left.

LCD sensor output.

 Initial test of robot.

 Underside of top level. Shows the two rear IR switches and front IR distance sensors. In the middle is the pan servo for the camera.

Some testing after adding a 2nd battery. This shows the two step-up's and the shields. Starting from top, Xbee, Voice, Protoshield, and Mega.

 Internals with wired connections.

 Sensor connections to the protoshield.

HBRC 9th Annual Tabletop Challenge

During the Maker Faire I attended a presentation about ROS, Robot Operating System. During which I heard about HBRC, Homebrew Robotics Club. Finally I had come across a group of other people that worked on robots at home. I attended my first meeting Wed, May 25th.

Here is a link to their site if you are interested.
http://www.hbrobotics.org/

This past Wednesday was 9th Annual Tabletop Challenge and potluck. For the potluck my Girlfriend and I decided to get creative and come up with some sort of robot or Android inspired idea. In the end we ended up with these.

Can you tell what they are? Post a comment below what you think.

Maker Faire 2011

It's been four years since attending my first Maker Faire, and this year was great! Each year there are a lot of awesome projects, robotics, electronics, DIY, and the like. This particular year was even better since I am now becoming increasingly familiar with DIY robotics. I felt that I was able to relate to a lot of the content more so with having worked on my robotics project. Below are a few pictures and videos of some of the projects I saw at the faire.

Microchip's ChipKit:

http://www.microchip.com/chipkit

Listening to Massimo Banzi (Co-founder of Arduino) and Chris Anderson (Editor and Chief of Wired Magazine)

Surface ocean research robot(not sure of the name):

Google's SKPR bot:

Master Chief:

DIYDrones and their ArduCopter:

Testing driving a Chevy Volt:

My girlfriend learning to solder:

Have you ever attended the Maker Faire or do you know of it? Check out MAKEzine now!

Did you make it this year? If so, what were some of your favorite projects?

Kid in a Candy Store

Where I live there isn't any electronics stores, any "real" ones anyway. There Radio Shack and then about an hour away is Fry's Electronics. Both don't have much as far as components and actually have noticed Radio Shack has more than Fry's for components.

Last Friday I was talking to a co-worker about the lack of stores and what I needed for my robot. Then he mentioned Santa Cruz Electronics. The website could use some updating but I started to get excited that there might be a place that has most things I would need. Its about 45min from the house but only 20min from work. This is perfect.

Saturday I wasn't really planning on going but we wanted to get out of the house and hadn't been to Santa Cruz for awhile. We decided to brave the rain and go for it and make a afternoon of it.

Once we found the place and went inside I immediately got excited. I was a kid in a candy store. I ended up getting a lot more than I had in mind but were things to restock my inventory at home.

They don't have everything I might need but they do have a lot more than other alternatives and if I need something quick for a weekend project or I am in the area it is perfect.

Windows tells you to hard power off?

I have repaired computers for many years and dealt with many users and I don't know how many times I have told someone its not a good idea to hard power off your computer. Fast forward to Windows 7 and now I guess its okay to do.

I usually have a lot of applications and browser tabs open so I dislike restarting and get annoyed when I forced to for updates or stability. Good thing Chrome is really good about restoring tabs! I think computers should be able to update and restart parts as need so you don't have to ever full restart. I am one who keeps my system on 24/7. You never know when you need something.

Last night my girlfriend was going to work on a logo for this blog so we fired up Photoshop and things got really slow after that and pretty much not responding. So I decided to try and kill Photoshop. After pressing Ctrl-Alt-Del, this is what I got after awhile of the system not responding to anything.

I was able to do a few times, so I had to follow the directions and hit the reset button while I cringed.

Anyone else seen this before? Really odd seeing windows telling to hard reset.

Post you comments below.

Finally Some Pictures

I am finally getting around to posting some pictures of the first Security Robot. I am posting as much detail as possible as I find other blogs don't post enough for people who want to get ideas and build something similar.

For the videos I used my phone via a webpage to control the robot. I also have a Windows app that can control it. I haven't decided if I wanted to writing a Android app to control it. It would be a good learning experience for developing Android apps, but the web page is much easier to update and runs on any device.

The robot has 2 layers, bottom has gearbox, step-up and charger.

Second is the top with electronics, battery and breadboard in the middle, and camera with LED's in the front. 

Close up of the rear that includes the electronics and testing breadboard. 

Rear view that shows the electronics and gearbox at the bottom.

Above is the charger I used from Adafruit Charger.

This shows the step-up I am using to go from 3.7 to 8v. Which powers the Arduino and the camera.

Close up of the step-up.

From bottom to top: Arduino Uno, Sparkfun Xbee w/shield, Adafruit Motor shield.

Basic dock using copper wrapping for pipes.

Charging contacts on the bottom of the robot.

Robot docked for charging.

Front with LED's on.

Above shot with LED's on and robot powered.

IR LED's on the camera for night vision.

Side view of the step-up.

Please post any comments or suggestions about the project.

Thanks.

Help name my robot!

One of my biggest issues at the moment is coming up with a good name. I have never been good at coming up with names and this is proof. There will be two versions of my robot but both with similar purpose; the first one being much simpler of the two.

Should they have similar names or different names?

The idea is for them to be a security robot so I can monitor the house while I am away and collect data from the sensors. Of course this includes annoying the Girlfriend when I am not home.

Currently, “Security Bot” is the temporary name. It’s simple, to the point but not at all very clever/creative.

What should I name it? Post your ideas in the comments after which we can vote on the top choices.

If your name is chosen I may allow you to control my bot via the web. I have been toying with the idea of allowing people to control it. Maybe have room or an area for it at certain times of the week.

Thanks for the help!

Security Robot 1 Progress

Since I started this blog after I started building my first robot I wanted to "catch up" on my progress. My first robot has turned out quite well and I have learned a lot along the way. I started designing my second one and can use what I have learned. Most of the parts are from Sparkfun.com and some Adafruit.com. I will list the parts and links to them soon. As with most projects they start of small and grow to much more. The same happened here.

I started with the Arduino Starter Kit, just to play around with a microcontroller and then I needed a project to build with it and decided that a robot would be great since I have always wanted to do that. Now I realized how easy and inexpensive it actually is!

I did a lot of research on various options since my goal was to be able to run the robot 24/7 with a automated way of charging. 

My first order was from Sparkfun.com and consisted of the following:

1 ROB-00321 Tank Treads

1 ROB-00319 Dual Motor Gearbox

1 ROB-10016 Universal Plate Set

The same day I ordered from Adafruit:

1 171 Motor Party Add-On Pack for Arduino

This was enough to get started and moving. I went with the Motor Party pack since it came with servos and such but later realized there isn't room for a pan/tilt camera mount so I have yet to use the servos. From here, I was able to get the framework of my code working and was also able to move the robot and eventually send commands via serial to control it. At this point I started looking at way to control it via the web. My first method was with using PHP talking to the serial port, but later, I ended up using Serialproxy. Serialproxy takes a COM port and bridges it to an IP/Port; this is made it much easier to control remotely. I am using the Tinkerproxy build. For testing I can telnet to my robot and send commands.

This was great but it meant the robot was tethered to my desk, well, actually as far as the USB cable would go. A long USB cable wouldn't cut it. At this point I knew this is something I could build on and promptly wanted to start ordering some more.

Note: Pictures to come.