Solar powered Ti-83Plus cleaning robot

[Timendus]

Well, as we're all bragging about the robots we built...

A few years ago me and a friend built a (mostly wooden ) Ti controlled robot that would calculate it's position and drive around without real sensor input. Only one switch in the front to make it stop driving if it bumped into something

After that, we wanted something more complicated and started working on a second robot. It was supposed to scan the floor with colour-sensors and use that input to simulate rabbit-like behaviour (eating, hiding, driving around ). We also made an emergency energy cell for it from chemical components, added a "head" that can "look" around and stuff... I'm looking at it now (it's still on the shelf here at my parent's place) and I still think it looks neat . Unfortunately we didn't have enough time to program the PIC that would interface with the calculator (it was a school project, so we had a deadline) and it had to stay remote-controlled...

We got a 10 out of 10 for both projects nevertheless :P

[kv83]

We demand pictures

[benryves]

I'd love to interface a PIC with my TI - they have proper timing, for one, and that means that they could be used to act as a bridge to more advanced hardware. After all, the TI hardware protocol is pretty simple (this weekend I decided I needed to learn a bit more VB.NET and so wrote a link program that can so far list all the files on the calc and transfer them one by one to the PC and save as properly formatted 8x... files, as well as take screenshots and send keypresses). However, the only PIC stuff I have at home is a PICAXE based on the 12 series - so 8 pins, and not enough IO pins overall to connect to the TI - I'd need 4 pins, and only have 3 - and I'd rather that in PICASM (even if it is a pain, with a fantastic 2 whole registers) but my flasher has gone walkies. Not to mention that the 12 series chips I have (the only ones I've got knocking around - I'd kill for even a simple 16F84!) are write-once chips, which could get a bit expensive
I could always extract my STAMPII from somewhere (I've lost it) but it's BASIC again, and I doubt people would want to pay the £40-odd to build any TI hardware I'd construct with it.

[Timendus]

I'd kill for even a simple 16F84!

Hahaha That's the one we experimented with if I'm not mistaken

We demand pictures

I thought you would I'd taken my digital camera out before I read your post Unfortunately the bitch just ran out of batteries... So here's the first robot (the wooden one, disregard the dust please ):





Second robot will follow as soon as I've recharged my batteries...

[benryves]

I'd kill for even a simple 16F84!

Hahaha That's the one we experimented with if I'm not mistaken

It's a nice mid-range chip with a decent amount of memory and IO pins. Of course, I'd prefer one from the 17F series (huge 40-pin jobs with oodles of memory) but they're probably a bit overkill.

[kv83]

Aynone has a few links how to start making robots? I am rather intrested now

[benryves]

Aynone has a few links how to start making robots? I am rather intrested now

PICAXE http://www.rev-ed.co.uk/picaxe/ have a simple buggy for sale - it's not exactly building a full robot yourself, but once assembled you can program the chip in it and tell it what to do. The PICAXE chip is a bog-standard PIC chip with a special OS preloaded onto it which adds all sorts of useful routines - rather than make you build them yourself, they offer routines for IR comms, serial data transfer, AT protocol for PC keyboards and so on as standard. It also makes them damned easy to program - just connect them directly up to a serial port, no fancy expensive PIC flashers required
Oh, and the BASIC is much less of a headache than ASM, I can tell you that.

[Timendus]

My batteries are recharged
Here's the other robot... And again; please look past the dust







Unfortunately the calc can't interface with the robot, so it's just a good-looking radio controlled car :D
There should be a few parts lying around here like the colour sensors, the PIC, the engine and transmission stuff to rotate the "head" et cetera, but I can't find them at the moment...

[DJ_O]

Cool, I'm not too much in electronic but I like what people can do sometimes. I heard someone who made a computer with a water-based cooler instead of a fan to make sure the computer doesnt go too hot. Maybe once my parents will get the website link I'll post it.

[kv83]

Cool, I'm not too much in electronic but I like what people can do sometimes. I heard someone who made a computer with a water-based cooler instead of a fan to make sure the computer doesnt go too hot. Maybe once my parents will get the website link I'll post it.

That's not so rare... I have a couple of friends who did that... silent cooling

[DJ_O]

A bit like Macintosh computers, but better. We barely hear anything. I wish I had one like that

[leofox]

It's great for overclocking too, because the cooling is better.

The problem is that it's expensive: 200 €.

[Drak Dragon]

Mabey we should try to build something like that, but something different... how about the worlds first Calculator Based toaster?

[DJ_O]

I got a similar idea for that, but I cant tell anything yet (just wait). Also I will have to get the concerned people permission to do what I want to do (it's something very weird related to a game under developpement) . A few people alerady know what it should be but plz dont tell it, it's a secret

[tr1p1ea]

Those robots are sweet, i would love to build something similar but i dont have the time :S.