Hello All,
I'm new here & wanted to introduce myself & my rover. I'm a robotics software engineer in the SF Bay area, and am looking to compete in the RoboMagellan competition @ Robogames as well as Sparkfun AVC. I competed in RoboMagellan last year, using my APM 2.0 board as a sensor/actuator interface & with a pandaboard running my mission software (computer vision, etc). An injury sustained from a motorcycle crash in May kept me from competing in AVC. This year, I would prefer to use APM2Rover for the mission work as well, and eliminate the computer all together.
My rover is fairly standard at the moment. I'm using an otterbox as a ruggedized electronics housing, bolted onto a Traxxas Stamped 2wd brushless. I have a 10000 mAh 2S lipo and am using the ParkBEC from Dimension Engineering to get my regulated 5v.
I'm looking to add quite a few features and would like to share them with the community as I get them up and running. Here are a few things I'd like to add support for:
one or multiple bump sensors.
computer vision target (cones, jumps, etc) & obstacle (barrels) detection using the yet-to-be-released CMUCam5.
RPM monitoring using the Traxxas telemetry RPM sensor (hall effect)
Steering servo feedback using Adafruit's analog feedback servo
Actuated sonar mount using the same feedback servo as above.
I working on getting some waypoint missions working and getting used to the interface. Having some trouble with the RC connection... however I'll post about that in the forums.
Replies
Nice rover. I have a couple of CMUcam5 on order too. The servo and servo board both sound interesting.
Looks great and I hope to see you out there in 2014. You should come join us on diyrovers google group [link].
I have a CMUcam5 on order, too. I keep talking about vision every year. :) Maybe this year. I may also try using a pair of AVRcams for stereo (I modded the AVRcam design to SMT). I dunno yet.
I'm curious about the analog feedback servo. I hadn't heard of that.
Have you seen the I2C-controlled OpenServo that Sparkfun sells [here]? I plan to look into that a bit more as I like the idea of running the entire robot on an I2C bus and position information from the servo might help with heading estimation.
I'm contemplating designing and building an ESC add-on that implements speed control with encoder feedback + ESC control. We shall see.
Traxxas is well built no argument. I will also, for the benefit of other readers, heartily endorse ECX vehicles based on the string of severe poundings that Data Bus has taken with no breaks, and the mountain of positive praise and similar experiences over on ultimaterc.com
@Justin,
Looks good! All of my competition rovers use the Traxxas line of chassis and I feel that the Traxxas brand is the best when it comes to taking the punishment your rover can experience at the Sparkfun AVC.
Will be nice if you can make the Sparkfun 2014 AVC. Hope to see you there.
Regards,
TCIII ArduRover2 Developer