NiVek 1

Over the weekend I finally had a few hours to get all the basic functionality working on my latest robot "NiVek I"

I'll be doing some additional posts along with some source code, but below are some of the cool features

Hardware

• Traxster Chassis and Turret from Robotics Connection
• Main Board and Turret boards I designed and had manufactured by PCB Express based upon the Parallax Javelin Stamp a PIC processor with additional RAM/ROM that has a built in Java Interpreter
• Bluetooth Communications via Embedded Blue transceiver
• I2C bus driven by the Javelin Stamp
• GPIO14 General Purpose IO A/D & D/A on the I2C bus
• SD20 20 port Servo Control on the I2C bus
• 3 Sharp GP2D120 IR Sensors mounted on the turret
• 2 Ultrasonic sensors one mounted on the turret and another mounted on a servo to allow panning at the rear of the robot
• Speech via Daventech SP03 Text to Speech Synthesizer on the I2C bus
• CMPS03 Daventech Compass
• Optical Wheel Encoders
• MotorMindB DC Motor Speed Controller
• 2 laser pointers mounted on the turret for range detection (this will be a great post once I work out the details)
• GrandTec Wireless Web Cam mounted on the turret
• 2 x MC24LC256 256K I2C Serial CMOS EEPROM

Software

• Software on robot written in Java
• Simple <STX><ETX> communications protocol with Device Type, Device ID, Device Action and Payload along with a Check Sum communicating from the robot to a C# application via BlueTooth
• Although the first version of the controller application is a C# Win Forms application the Communications Library is setup to create Microsoft Robotics Studio Services (when time permits)
• The following features are controlled via the existing console
  • Motion Detection Algorithm on Web Cam Input
  • Drawing heading on web cam input
  • White half moon displays ranges from three IR Sensors on turret
  • Turret Pan & Tilt controlled via sliders
  • RGB Display used for turning laser detection algorithm (range finding)
  • Motor Controls via slider
  • Speech Control

There just aren't enough hours in the day to do all this fun stuff!

- ec