Back in Fighting Shape

Most of the experimentation that I've done with Robie has been either on a breadboard or on the chassis, without the full cover on. I thought I'd take the opportunity to see how everything fits together now that most of the basics are in place and the platform truly is wireless:

There you have it. Robie is now looking a lot more like his old self. All of the switches, sensors, motors and gear are hooked up. He feels like a solid machine now. There's quite a bit of heft to him. I owe that primarily to the battery pack.

So from my original goal, there's basically 2 pieces of hardware that haven't been implemented yet. The amp for the speaker, and the infra-red distance sensor. The amp I don't have yet. Hopefully that shows up on my doorstep soon. The distance sensor I still haven't come up with a good place to mount yet. My ideal would be on the front center pointing towards the ground. This would allow me to stop Robie before falling down the stairs. But the whole bumper assembly makes this complicated.

From my expanded goals I thought I'd implement a Bluetooth module. This will allow me to reprogram the WiFi on-the-go. It will also allow me to control Robie when the Wifi jams up. This can happen when there's interference on the 2.4Ghz signal. Because the video signal takes so much bandwidth, the control commands can become non responsive at times. This Bluetooth chip is still on order. So it might be awhile before I see it.

As it stands right now there is plenty I can do software-wise. First and foremost will be an auto-roam mode (i.e. bump and go mode). This mode will make use of the ultrasonic ping sensor as well as the bump sensor. After that I might try my hand at implementing a WiFi configuration mode. I.e. if the Robie can't connect to an access point on boot, then it will turn in to an access point to allow someone to configure the WiFi.

Lots of fun to be had...