The last robot I built was a Roomba Sumo Robot (Talos) for a small competition with co-workers. While collecting parts for this little eBay robot platform I got for somewhere in the neighborhood of 15$USD, I grabbed my Pololu motor controller and remember that I wrote that whole Sumo robot in ASM; that was a lot of code between two PICs.
The little robot I’m building now has very few specifications. It’s goal in life is to follow you around, but not too close. It should back away when needed and basically run around, pausing for a while in its search for someone to follow around. My wife named it Spunk because she’s certain to be the one it annoys most.
I’ve built the project as seen in the photo and written all primary code.. ordered a lot of battery management parts to see what I like the best. Determined I can’t get the robot to “find” people with the sensors I have, so I ordered more… so this little guy is half-done. I’ll shelve him until more parts arrive. I really only grabbed it down as it was 4 projects deep in the to-do list because I haven’t kept up with pre-ordering parts, or worse.. ordered the wrong things. I’m still on the hunt for a better display for the WX radio, ordered items for my RS-485 project, etc. etc..
The heart of Spunk is a PIC 18F14K22 on a TAUTIC 20 pin development board. Maybe Jayson ( @TAUTIC ) needs to pay me for all this advertising? 😉 jk.. I just bought a couple of the boards because they fit my type of prototyping perfectly. This was my last one… time to make an order over at @tindie for some more.
For now, no code. I’ll post the old ASM code for the Pololu motor controller and the C code as well once it get it properly commented and make sure it at least mostly works. Once I do some real roving tests I’ll throw it on YouTube (and maybe the first tests of Talos as well)… TBC for now.
