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Palm Pilot Robot Kit
Pizon writes: "Ever wonder what else you can do with your Palm? Well, here is a good start. This clever little monkey used the 3Com Palm Pilot to build a fully autonomous robot out of standard, readily available parts (glue, tape, and a small amount of soldering). The robot can then drive itself around on flat surfaces, using optical range sensors to sense nearby obstacles and walls." Proof that not everything requires scads of hardware or the latest processor -- sometimes small is beautiful.
Nope - OTS serial servo interface board - go to the site and read it...
I support the EFF - do you?
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
This is stupid. Talk about overkill.
;-)
How much processing power do you need to process a few sensors and drive a couple wheels? $200 bucks worth of palm? Uhh... how about $4 bucks worth of microcontroller like a nice 16C64 from PIC Microship microcontroller? Enough to make a hardware guy cry! Onboard RAM, ROM, EEPROM.... mmmmm..... timers and interrupt vectors.... 20mA drive current.... whoo-hooo! Just need a few H-Bridges and a couple infrared leds and detectors. You wanted to know what to do with those old 5 1/4" drives... its time to get out those irons and solder suckers!
I suppose this kit is nice for those software types that don't like to touch hardware, but what fun is that?
If you REAALY dont want to challenge yourself, and don't want to touch hardware, I would think a nice Lego mindstorms kit would be better suited and more flexable. Reconfigurable, and you can always buy more motors and sensors.
A freaking GUI for a robot? And thats a selling feature? Who needs a GUI anyways
Total Cost, on top of the Pilot itself, about $270, $250 if you've already got the sync cable.
Work for Change & GET PAID!
I love this idea. Simple, easy to get going, I esp. like the spin & move at same time feature of those wheels...
So what i want to do is:
Control it with an iPaq running linux.
Install wireless networking into the iPaq.
Allow it to explore and learn it's enviroment, storing and retrieving info through wireless when it can't hold all it's data.
Make it 'curious' When it senses something has changed about the way things are laid out (based off it's exsisting 'floor plan'), make it want to explore.
Make it get 'hungry' and go automatically charge itself. (I know, have to add the hardware side support for that).
Give it tasks: sweep the floor. Where I work would be perfect for this, large smooth concrete floor with lots of obstacles.
When the floor was clean, do senseless acts like run a IA routine to find the quickest route between points (kinda a 'idle-time' task).
etc...
Ok, I know it can't do all that, but this is definately a jumping off point. It's the ultimate blend of hardware/software hacking.
A great learning tool, too... can you imagine the reaction if you brought one into a class room that would do something cool like map out the room and wirelessly report the results back to a laptop? Have it show the room being explored in real time on the screen.
This is gonna' be fun...
Are these guy's going for the MOST COSTLY robot to build with a Palm?
From my calcs, this thing would cost over $250 - over the cost of a Palm!
Heck, the wheels and servos alone cost over $100!
Now, since this was all about a Palm robot, we can just say this is one part that is needed, and has other uses besides the robot, so let's not really factor it in...
So how to make a cheaper robot? Start by dropping the holonomic drive! A simple two wheel approach will work fine, and will also save you on a servo. That alone will drop your cost by over $60 (not $75, because you make up the $10-$15 by using two normal R/C aircraft landing gear wheels bolted onto the servos). Save another $6.00 on the acrylic by taping the parts to a few FREE AOL CD's (as well as possibly creating a winning entry in the previously posted UltimateChaos contest!). Save around $30 by hooking up some matched IR LED/Transistor pairs instead of the sensors (you may have to calibrate this yourself - plus you might need a few more parts - but not much more - get one of those sensor interface Forrest Mims books at RatShack while yer at it). You'll also save close to $14.00 if you already have the glue, tape, and heat shrink tubing available (any geek worth his salt BETTER have these things handy). Finally, save the $32.00 for the battery, and spend only about $10.00 of it for a used ni-cad pack for a cell phone at your neighborhood electronics junk yard (provided you live in a place that has one or two).
So, what do we have? I just told you how to save over $150 by a) dropping the holonomic drive, which only has value as being "the" thing to do in robotics today (seems like a fashion show!) b) using cheaper parts and stuff around you. Now, I say use that serial port thing, 'cause you probably couldn't do better on your own for less, and it is cheap and easy enough to use. However, know that they way they want you to build a table-top robot is a damn expensive way to go.
Oh, almost forgot - since the cheaper way to do it involves the tank-drive approach, and this is a table-top robot, you don't need casters. If you want (or need) something to rest the fore/aft portions of the robot on, use a couple felt pads.
I support the EFF - do you?
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
While you wouldn't get an extremely accurate measurement this way, you would get close enough for a tabletop environment:
Measure the IR light level (which is all I bet these "sensors" actually do - but I might be wrong here) with the IR LED/Transistor pair at various distances to an object, and build a table of thresholds to know roughly how close the sensor is to an object (on your tabletop environment). It might even be possible to calculate this with ratios (probably have to factor in the square root of distance thing as well).
I also noted that the Palm could be left off the cost of the complete robot, because it was useful and could be used for other things in its own right.
I support the EFF - do you?
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Hey, I agree that the holonomic drive is a cool part, but for making a cheap table top robot, it is kinda overkill (now, if they were touting a cheap holonomic drive robot - hey, no contest!).
I would admire the whole thing more if they told you how to build your own holonomic drive wheels from scratch (they don't seem like a very hard part to build - I bet you could make some out of drill saw rounds and a few wooden beads, with proper application of a Dremel).
I support the EFF - do you?
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
I need a "Follow Me" program so my Palm won't lose me...
"Ever wonder what else you can do with your Palm? "
I really don't want to know about your personal life.
And robots too... man that's just getting weird.
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This is the kind of thing that I always think of when I hear the word "hacker." Stuff like this makes me proud to be a geek-someone with some ingenuity has put together something that was never envisioned by Palm. I hope someday I'll make something as cool in its own way :)
Colin Winters
I'll have it take my AIBO for a walk...
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The truth is out th- oh, wait, here it is...
Of course, some of the memory can't be "erased" because of the way 3Com writes basic apps into a small PROM section. Why games like Hardball needed to be written to PROM was always beyond me...
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
Hmmm.
Black rubber-sheathed robotic tentacles attached to a Springboard module, flailing around -- now that would be suitably evil-looking...
Who doesn't want an autonomous, completely amoral robotic cephalopod in their shirt pocket, anyway? =)
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
links on building robotic tentacles
Keyword search for "nitinol". I don't think it would be too hard to build tentacles using nitinol wires as the "muscles", but it might be expensive, and it might consume too much power. If that's the case, then I would probably go for a multi-joint spine with a wire to each joint, and control all the wires with a camshaft in the body to give an authentic "wriggling".
BTW, I had no interest in PDAs until I saw the Handspring. Modules rule!!! The only drawback I've heard of is that the Handspring supposedly can't be upgraded, as it has no flash memory. Maybe they'll add flash or a socketed ROM in rev2. If they come out with a better camera module, the Handspring may make my Christmas wish-list.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
...including some things I don't want to know about.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
How long until this is avaliable as a Visor module? (^_^)
Aside from being fun for the mechanicaly inept, it might be a nifty testing ground for the robot software.
It would definitely be a good way to drain your Palm batteries.
...is using a concept called the 'killough platform' and more information can be found here. Someone already did it with Lego Technic and a Mindstorms here. --Dave.
Since the site is down/slow ( at least for me, slashdotted? ) lemme give you the inside scoop on Greg. I went to high school with this boy, and was in a few class with him over the four years there.
.com kinda guy, he's the hardcore robotics boi ) Well I guess he beat me to the famous punch. He's now got slashdot beating down his web page =[. oh well.
Greg is, well, exceptional. In our chem class, the teacher called him the nucleus, cause he's got a big head. ( if you don't beleive me, check out http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~reshko/Calculus/ , he is the one on the far right with the nasa shirt. note: props to rosy, jeremy, ben and bronwyn on the left) He gave me homework in algebra two. (sorry rosy =]) In physics two, though, he didn't really help me at all (bastard) He is, however, probably one of the more likely candidates in our high school to become very rich and famous in the next few decades. In fact, we made a bet that whoever makes their first million first would take the other out to lunch. ( I'm more of a
I would like to add that as far as I can tell, greg still does not have a life. He is now a freshman at CMU and I think he still lives at home. So, if any hot girls out there wanna introduce that sexy russian to the ways of the world, please do.
justin wants lunch, greg =]
note: please moderate this up, I want to make greg laugh. He doesn't smile enough either =]
Quick! Someone slap a Palm VII with a Palm camera on this thing!
Walmart Employee: "Security to hardware. We have a code 4427. I repeat, we have a small robot loose in the store."
All while geeks watch the live webcast from the bot.