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Showing posts from November, 2013

Software Developers Experience building a robot Part 2(Tank treads and blue smoke)

Tanked As I mentioned in  part 1 , I had drawn the conclusion that legs were not what I wanted and that tank treads are probably the most overkill for weight bearing. So , I ordered a Rover 5 base. Rover 5 robot base Unforeseen requirements When the Rover base arrived I opened the box to discover something I had completely overlooked; I didn't have a motor controller. With no clue of what an H-Bridge was and a new found determination I decided to build my own motor controller using about 6 relays. It was finally time to get serious about soldering on those proto-boards. I used a breadboard to prototype a system that used 6 relays and 4 transistors. You could hear the loud clickity clack of the relays as the direction changed but I was pretty proud of my ingenuity. It was time to solder! This was the most intricate soldering task I had ever undertaken and it really showed that I'm more of a software kind of guy. I perceived it to be the longest time I have eve