Remember The Heathkit HERO? Check Out '912'

moorley writes "The 912 Mobile Platform built by White Box Robotics based on VIA motherboards as part of their PC Bots program. Still in prototype but they are projecting to have it out by Summer 2004. They have no prices yet, but estimate 'building or buying the 912 for about the cost of a decent PC.'"

Comments

pricing info

[morcheeba]

Their pre-order page says "Estimated retail cost on a "bare bones" platform should fall between $599 to $699."

Re:virtually unstoppable?

[youngerpants]

They have motion detectors, every time it detects motion it emails a pic/ video to your account.

Having a few of these patroling a warehouse, for example, would be a nice addition to any security system (as well as being exceptionally cool)

Overkill???

[John Seminal]

Why do you need the big x86 processors? Is the robot going to be able to have complex thinking algorithms?

I would probably start with some very cheap circuits. You can program them to do simple movements or simple lcd displays. If you want a "brain", you could add it on. Most of these circuits can be connected to by a serial cable.

If anyone is interested, there is a ton of information here: http://www.rentron.com

Re:Overkill???

[Rick.C]

These little guys look like they would work well for controlling motors and sensors. Much more bang than a Basic Stamp (tm). And they're small enough and cheap enough to stick 'em in wherever you need 'em.

Some models have built-in ethernet.

High Value, Not Overkill

[OrangeTide]

a VIA EPIA 800V can be had for $100 now. about the only thing that can be that is an AVR kit. (which can be had for about $35 for a dev board and $10 for a cable to program it. then download a free compiler/assembler. and $30 for a book on how to program AVR. so that's $75).

Also that rentron company doesn't sell very interesting stuff.
Build your own AVR starter kit is going to be a better price than any PICbasic thing and you can program it in C, asm or basic.

Basic Stamp is extremely weak. A robot desigened around a basic stamp is going to be as primative as your first LOGO program. (Turn left here.. weee).

A VIA C3 800 board, despite being an ugly evil x86 is going to have some serious power behind it. You can then have some of the following features on your system:

• USB camera to record events
• some face tracking abilities(neat!)
• A wireless (bluetooth or 802.11b) connection between other robots for cooprative tasks(soccor match anyone?)
• Voice synthizier (just grab rsynth)
  
• enough RAM to do accurate mapping
  
• inexpensive to connect a GPS unit up to USB or serial (often these units have a built-in electronic compass as a bonus)
  

The processing power, expandability and cost make the x86 an ideal canidate for a robot like this. Of course a cheaper robot becomes attractive when you want to have multiple robots that communicate. Really the average budget for a hobbot robot project runs around $1000. So if you drop $700 on this chassis and a motherboard you're set. If make AVR or PIC based robots that cost $50 to build you would probably build like 4 or 5 of them and have them work together. (or worse, build 4 or 5 revision until you were satisfied with it and have three robots that don't really work very well and one good one)