pic: Thousands of manhours of work... coming '07

[Mike]

loading photo ...

[RoboMadi]

ehm...........what is this?
Does look like a drive train to me....



Robot Balboa?


Imad

[Tim Arnold]

Sounds interesting, but I can't help to chuckle when I look at the portal and this on the side... No More Teasers in 2007!

[Tom Bottiglieri]

Looks like Mike got his navigation black box working. Lets see if its useful.

[Mike]

As a little side note:

All schematics, code, part numbers, EVERYTHING from this project will eventually be released. For under $300 and some basic technical know-how (eg: can you read an instruction manual?), a first year team will be able to implement a very accurate and effective...

Wait, what were we talking about again?

[Billfred]

Man, that is an exquisite box of Diet Pepsi.

Now, out with the details--judging from the picture and the poster, I assume it's some software kung-fu (and world-class kung-fu at that, knowing 237's track record with such things). Color me interested.

[chris31]

Originally Posted by Tom Bottiglieri

Looks like Mike got his navigation black box working. Lets see if its useful.

Is that what the extra board is.

From Mikes post it looks like he is using that board to read the values that would be send over the dashboard port. I assume he is parseing them and logging them to something a CF card maybe. You can then use that log in making your autonomous code. It looks very nice.

[Andrew Blair]

Originally Posted by Tom Bottiglieri

Looks like Mike got his navigation black box working. Lets see if its useful.

Alright! I can see two encoders; I imagine you coupled it with a gyro, maybe an accelerometer for wheel slip if you wanted to get really fancy (4 Thousand lines!?! Where does it all go!)? Maybe even a nice input system to easily code a coordinate autonomous, perhaps even on the fly?

If you are doing the black box as Tom stated, I'm impressed. I had started to think about it a couple years back, but never had the initiative or skill to code it. And I'm glad I didn't try! Four thousand lines and change? Crazy, but awesome. Don't feel pressured to release that baby, especially not this coming year. You deserve the exclusive right to an insane autonomous if you created it!

[Mike]

Originally Posted by Andrew Blair

Maybe even a nice input system

I think I should stop talking now

[Matt Krass]

Originally Posted by Tom Bottiglieri

Looks like Mike got his navigation black box working. Lets see if its useful.

Hey, I programmed that black box

Actually Mike and I are working on this together, its a fun project and so far, its mostly operational, the RC is being a bit uncooperative though.

Originally Posted by chris31

Is that what the extra board is.

That's an STK500 In-System Programmer and prototype board from Atmel, it's the (temporary) home of our blackbox, which monitors the robot and sends a nice packetized burst of information to the RC with all kinds of useful info

[Heretic121]

from tom's comment i cant help to think what havoc this might bring upon with another "black box" like 195 had last year...

[Donut]

Sounds like fun! I'm glad to know there'll be some impressive autonomous modes out there this coming year. We have to see the results you get from this next season, I hope it proves that sensors really can make such a huge difference.

We'll try to give you a run for your money if we can.

[6600gt]

Originally Posted by Mike

I think I should stop talking now

I had never seen this or heard about it before until now. Honestly.

But this is the "exact, identical, ditto" IDEA that I had for this year.

But I am no where near where you guys are with it. I am currently working with external PICs and Visual C++ app programming.

Honestly, I have never seen or heard about this before today yet the idea started this summer. That picture is exactly what it was.

I dought, I will be able to get it done though.

Good luck to you guys.

[Mike]

I forgot I mentioned this project to Tom a while back, seems like the majority of the mystery is gone. Should've known not to trust him with stuff like this

Don't think I'm gonna let you in on all the juicy stuff...

This is a joint effort between Matt Krass and I. The testbot and hardware is located at my house, but without him this project would've never advanced from an idea and sketch on paper. He provided a large amount of the technical information that I didn't know prior to this project. Biggest learning experience of my life.

So heres a brief run-down.

• ATMega16
• STK500
• No dashboard port
• CF card? Don't give me ideas...
• Havocs a nice word
• $300 and an hour or two of work and you're up and running

That is all

[Tom Bottiglieri]

Looks good. I'm wondering how you're going to get "Drive Forward 100 inches" to actually work on the robot hardware side. Some modular drive control functions on the IFI side, perhaps?

We did something similar last year, but it was all done on the IFI hardware. I like bringing it off of the RC though; we ran into some interrupt problems between the encoders, timers, and constant serial traffic between the RC and our LCD screen system.