I suck at soldering

Yesterday I tried to solder on leads to the motors to connect them to my breadboard, and failed horribly, so I'm going to get some help from Collin to learn how to solder properly. (I did get better over time, but I lost all my patience)

Below are some pictures of my robot prototype as it stands now - just motors connected to a battery. The top of the robot is on the left, and the bottom on the right. Everything is connected with duct tape, jumper wire, and hope, but I'll have a more permanent setup very soon.

 

I realized I haven't posted any pictures or descriptions of the parts I am using for the prototype of the robots, so I've included a picture below of all the parts I have so far. Note: these are only the basic parts - I have some sensors, and will need to get more parts for my eventual final version of the robot - these are just the basic structure of how the bot will move around.  Below the picture is a list of the parts as well. (Motor Driver, Step Up/Down, and wheels are not pictured)

• Raspberry Pi
• PiBox Enclosure for the Raspberry Pi
• GPIO ribbon cable for the Raspberry Pi
• 8 GB SDHC card for the Raspberry Pi
• Pololu Robot Chassis RRC01A Transparent Red
• Dual Chassis Completion Kit for RRC01A
• DRV8833 Dual Motor Driver Carrier
• 2-AA Battery Holder
• 4-AA Battery Holder
• Pololu Step-Up/Step-Down Voltage Regulator S7V7F5
• 270-Point Breadboard

In other news, after fighting with the SD card reader and eventually giving up and using another machine, I have copied the Raspbian OS on to the SD card so I can now start to set up an environment and code for the robots. Hopefully next week I can have the robot directing itself around.

Parts Arrive

Most of my parts have arrived, and I've started to assemble the first robot. I'm still waiting until Friday for a couple parts that I'll need to get everything connected, (A case for the Raspberry Pi, and a ribbon cable) so I haven't started coding yet, but my plan is to get one Raspberry Pi up and running this weekend so I can start to work on the code.

I'll post some pictures of the robot once everything is connected (hopefully early next week).

Second Semester

Winter break is nearly over, and that means that the second semester of senior seminar is about to begin. I hope to provide some more interesting blog posts this semester, since I will be making progress (hopefully) each week and have at least something to share.

Over winter break I started ordering most of the parts that will be used for the robot. I decided to use Raspberry Pi for my CPU, which will be great because it gives me a lot of flexibility on what language I can write in, and should have enough power for almost anything I'll need. (And as an added bonus, I'll have have a couple Raspberry Pi to play around with after this project is over) I'll have more detail soon about the design of the robots and the other components that I'm using, but I just wanted to give an idea of what is to come.

Also, huge thanks to Collin who helped to pick out what components I'll need to get everything connected and powered.