Published by rich on Wednesday, December 19, 2007 - 00:47:02 - Filed under Robots and Electronics, Other Fun Stuff
Is that spelled tannenbaum or tannenbomb?
Don’t try this at home. Most importantly, don’t sue the makers of the SpamButcher anti-spam filter if you hurt yourself. We told you not to do it.
Published by rich on Tuesday, December 18, 2007 - 01:22:44 - Filed under Robots and Electronics
I just placed an order with BatchPCB for two prototypes of what may eventually evolve into some kind of translational-drift / melty brain related product:
For right now it’s just for my own bots.
BatchPCB only charges $2.50 / square inch plus a $10 setup fee for each job (which can include as many boards / designs as you want). My board came out to about 4 square inches / $10.
One of the big reasons I made this board was to familiarize myself with the process of making a commercially-produced printed circuit board. It was a little more involved than I thought - but wasn’t that hard.
Of course, it’ll be another 3 weeks until the boards show up, and I find out what I did wrong.
I’ll do another post on the process of designing a PCB shortly.
The board has:
AVR Atmega168 (all pins are exposed)
Two darlington drivers (BU941ZT -good for about 30 amps peak)
Voltage regulator
ISP programming port
It does not include an accelerometer. Positioning of the accelerometer is kind of critical - so I didn’t want to tie it down to the board. There’s also the option of doing “sensorless” translational drift without an accelerometer.
The onboard motor drivers are probably beefy enough to handle up to about a 3lbs bot. For larger bots - an external driver board could be used.
While it’s unclear if this board will ever make it to “market” - I do plan on publishing more information about the dirty details of making translational drift work.
Published by rich on Wednesday, December 5, 2007 - 06:50:23 - Filed under Robots and Electronics, Other Fun Stuff
Ladies, gentlemen and others - I would like to introduce Nothing Labs.
Nothing Labs is SpamButcher’s alter-ego for commercial projects involving robotics.
As much as I love working on spam software, I am honestly much more passionate about electronics.
We (me) have two projects currently “in the cooker.”
The first is a packaged “translational drift” or “melty brain” circuit board for combat robotics. This project will almost certainly never bring in big-bucks - and may ultimately be a set of schematics / documentation or kit as opposed to a proper product.
The second project is the one I’m spending most of my time on as of recent. While it’s hopefully going to be really cool, it’s not working yet and I can’t go into any detail due to possible “IP” issues.