A Curious Collection of the Musings of One Jeremy Wise

We talked about what we’d use for movement for our robots, and decided that treads are the most precise and stable means of movement. I know I’m way ahead of myself, since I still don’t even have the microcontroller working yet, but I made a discovery while searching for treads online.

I knew MegaBloks allows you to buy individual parts (in case you lose a block or break one), and I found this model which has great looking treads. So I put in a request for a couple of them. I guess they’ll get back in touch with me about a price. I’ll update the post when I know more.

Update: I received an email this morning saying my order was approved and is being processed. I never provided any payment information, so maybe they just send parts out as long as the request isn’t absurd. Makes me glad I’ve bought plenty of MegaBloks sets after Legos became horribly expensive!

Over the weekend I did a bit more research on the robot ideas. I’m going to start working with a PIC microcontroller for the brains of the beast, until it becomes too small to manage our workload. First things first, I went looking for a schematic of a simple project using the PIC, which I found here. I’m also going to need a programmer so I can burn the programs into the thing, and I found a very cheap setup here. I ordered most of the parts from Jameco Electronics because I’ve done business with them in the past and had good experiences (and they have an incredible selection).

Programmer Parts List:
1 220 ohm 1/4 watt resistor
4 10K ohm 1/4 watt resistors
2 1K ohm 1/4 watt resistors
1 10 uF 25V electrolytic capacitor
2 0.1 uF 35V tantalum capacitor
1 0.01 uF ceramic capacitor
1 5.1V 1 watt zener diode
2 IN914 silicone diodes
1 2N7000 NMOS FET
1 2106A PMOS FET
1 78L12 voltage regulator
1 18 pin socket (for housing the PIC)
1 DB-25F (if you use a pass-through parallel cable)
1 DB-25M (if you plug directly into the parallel port)
1 15V power supply

Check out the web sites for more information. I’ll post pictures and results as soon as I have them!