Meet RoboProp - an advanced Propeller based robot controller board (2 new videos)

Bill Henning

Summary of RoboProp's features:

- Propeller running at 100Mhz with 64KB EEPROM with uSD for storage
- up to 24 servos or digital inputs with standard 3 pin pinout
- MCP3208 for eight 12-bit channels of ADC, 0-5V inputs
- L298 dual H-bridge for PWM based motor control
- and much more; please see the announcement

For a complete list of features, please see the announcement in the Robotics forum

http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php?131348-Introducing-RoboProp-an-advanced-Propeller-based-controller-%28upgrade-for-BOE-BOT

Or you can ask for more details :-)

UPDATES:

- RoboProp is now available for sale!
- I've started adding videos to my YouTube channel - see http://youtube.com/mikronauts

Pricing:

Kits:

$99.00USD+s/h - RoboProp Full Kit - DC motor edition (includes L298 H-Bridge and related parts)
$89.00USD+s/h - RoboProp Full Kit - Continuous rotation servo edition (does NOT include L298 H-Bridge and related parts)

Assembled & Tested:

$149.00USD+s/h - RoboProp - DC motor edition (includes L298 H-Bridge and related parts)
$139.00USD+s/h - RoboProp - Continuous rotation servo edition (does NOT include L298 H-Bridge and related parts)

Please email me at "mikronauts at gmail dot com" with your address for a quote including shipping and handling.

* distributors to be announced at a later date

p.s.

Sapieha did his usual PCB layout magic - I think RoboProp looks great!

p.p.s.

All the features you see work!

Bill Henning

Reserved for files and FAQ

william chan

Hi Bill,

Where did you get those wheels from?
What type of motor are you using? Are they faster than the Continuous Rotation Servos?

Bill Henning

Hi William,

I got those Futaba servo mount wheels from Solarbotics, and I put them on the Parallax continous rotation servos that come with the BOE-BOT kit.

The wheels are a hair larger than the black Parallax wheels, so my RoboPropBOT is a hair faster than before the upgrade :-)

william chan wrote: »

Hi Bill,

Where did you get those wheels from?
What type of motor are you using? Are they faster than the Continuous Rotation Servos?

Cluso99

Excellent photos Bill. Nice job.

Bill Henning

Thanks Cluso99... I'm having a lot of fun putting RoboProp on my bots

Now I need to make some cool demos for UPEW...

Cluso99 wrote: »

Excellent photos Bill. Nice job.

M. K. Borri

If you can get it to run at 96Mhz, it's trivial to couple this with an Android phone for longer range and video. Put spiritplumber in a youtube search and see they're all prop based except the entry level which has an arduino on it. I sent them out in the street for groceries in three countries now! Your board looks nicer than mine, so see if the ADB bridge stuff can run on it. Needs 96Mhz and pins 0 and 1 free.

Bill Henning

That's a great idea!

I know it will run at 96MHz as it is running fine at 100MHz :-)

I will search for spiritplumber... and while I don't have an Android phone YET, I just might pick one up just for this purpose.

I do have a couple of 7" Android tablets with WiFi... hmm... I have 6MHz crystals too... hmm....

Pins 0&1 are readily available on the EXP1 header, using them for USB only makes them unavailable for use to control servos or read digital inputs..

Thanks for the kind words!

M. K. Borri wrote: »

If you can get it to run at 96Mhz, it's trivial to couple this with an Android phone for longer range and video. Put spiritplumber in a youtube search and see they're all prop based except the entry level which has an arduino on it. I sent them out in the street for groceries in three countries now! Your board looks nicer than mine, so see if the ADB bridge stuff can run on it. Needs 96Mhz and pins 0 and 1 free.

Bill Henning

Quick update:

I posted a description of the RoboProp demo with some information about the RoboProp firmware preview (and robots I took to UPEW) in post #19 in the following thread:

http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php?131348

oldPGMguy

Whats the ballpark cost for this robot?

Bill Henning

I am working on the bill of materials, and should have pricing tomorrow.

For the chassis in the photos above, I used a standard BOE-BOT chassis - you can start with

http://www.parallax.com/StoreSearchResults/tabid/768/List/0/SortField/4/ProductID/304/Default.aspx?txtSearch=boe-bot+parts+kit

or any of the other kits that include the chassis.

I added:

- RoboProp board, without populating the L298 dual H-Bridge section
- four Solarbotics Futaba/Parallax servo wheels, because my wheel encoder boards are designed for those wheels.
- two SirMorph IR sensor boards configured as 5ma low resolution wheel encoders
- one SirMorph IR sensor board configured as a rear virtual bumper
- three SirMorph IR sensor boards used as a line following sensor
- small prototype board to hold a HMC6352 I2C compass and a 38KHz IR remote sensor

By the time I showed it at UPEW last weekend, I also added a small servo for a "LIDAR" panning Sharp IR distance sensor (20cm-150cm)

I should have a production run of SirMorph sensor kits in about three weeks, I have used up all the prototype PCB's I have.

Could you narrow down for me what you are looking for?

- RoboProp "Essentials" (bare pcb, uSD socket, 6.25Mhz crystal)
- RoboProp Upgrade Kit (no parts for L298 dual H-Bridge section, otherwise all the parts that are normally on RoboProp)
- RoboProp Full Kit (all the parts including L298 section that are normally on RoboProp)
- RoboProp assembled and tested, without L298 section
- RoboProp assembled and tested, including L298 section
- or basically a fully assembled and tested RoboPropBot like above?

I will be posting more photos tomorrow.

Thanks,

Bill

oldPGMguy wrote: »

Whats the ballpark cost for this robot?

blittled

Looks like an awesome board! I've been working on a Propeller based BOEbot and this would be perfect. I especially like that there is a prototyping area. I have an EmbeddedBlue Transceiver AppMod that I want to use with the BOEBot. I'm most interested in a kit without the L286. I have some birthday money and a jar full of change that is burning a hole in my pocket so I'll probably get one.

Bill Henning

Thank you for the nice words!

Actually I am working on the BOM and pricing right now... I have DigiKey in one window, a spreadsheet (with parts list) in the other... trying to figure it out

For more prototyping area RoboProp (using stacking headers) can mount right on top of any of the approx. 4"x3" prototyping boards in the "Mikronauts Modular System" too!

Since you don't need the L298 populated, that means that P0-P7 and P8-P11 would be available to the prototyping board (P12-P15 as well, but the uSD card uses those pins)

I am busy doing the BOM, but in a day or two I will unpack my RoboPropBOT (RoboProp + BoeBot chassis + much more) and take some pics, maybe make some YouTube videos of it...

blittled wrote: »

Looks like an awesome board! I've been working on a Propeller based BOEbot and this would be perfect. I especially like that there is a prototyping area. I have an EmbeddedBlue Transceiver AppMod that I want to use with the BOEBot. I'm most interested in a kit without the L286. I have some birthday money and a jar full of change that is burning a hole in my pocket so I'll probably get one.

Bill Henning

oldPGMguy & blittled

Thanks again for your interest. I have now finished the BOM, which allowed me to figure out the pricing:

Kits:

$99.00USD+s/h - RoboProp Full Kit - DC motor edition (includes L298 H-Bridge and related parts)
$89.00USD+s/h - RoboProp Full Kit - Continuous rotation servo edition (does NOT include L298 H-Bridge and related parts)

Assembled & Tested:

$149.00USD+s/h - RoboProp - DC motor edition (includes L298 H-Bridge and related parts)
$139.00USD+s/h - RoboProp - Continuous rotation servo edition (does NOT include L298 H-Bridge and related parts)

Introductory offer: 10% off the MSRP (but not the s/h) on the first ten RoboProp's (kit or assembled) sold

Email me your address for a shipping and handling quote (my email address is in my signature below)

Bill Henning

UPDATE:

I removed the old shots, and uploaded nine new shots to the first post

- One top view of an assembled and tested RoboProp (full kit, with L298 parts)

- Eight views of my highly upgraded BoeBOT - now RoboPropBOT named "Pollo"

Bill Henning

I've uploaded two videos to my YouTube channel:

"Marco" - Rover5 based, with LIDAR head, remotely controlled by my wife :-)

http://youtu.be/1lzAL_2xpIo

"LIDAR demo 1" - the RoboPropBOT (upgraded BOE) on my workbench, being turned around showing off compass and LIDAR display)

http://youtu.be/pHtKChSSW9I

I will be adding more videos this week.

Bill Henning

Here are three photo's of "Marco" - the RoboProp based robot I showed at UPEW