ALIBE - Update

ALIBE

I wanted to post an update on my project on this forum.

Intro:
ALIBE - Artificial LIfe BEing in my hope will be an autonomous land robot wandering about and communcating w. her home base two ways. ALIBE is structurally an EMAXX electric truck and is on its way to being powered by Parallax Propeller along w/ various other sensory and reactionary devices.

Present working:
I have been spending the last few weekends (and of course like the rest of us - nights) thinking, tinkering, bread-boarding, venting, and most importantly ASKING for help, guidance from our friendly folks here in our forum. The methodology I have chosen is to read/study, breadboard/try-out, move to prod staging - piece by piece.· I have been doing this w/ DS1620, MEMSIC, HB-25, Ping. Just more recently (today) completed testing my AeroComm 4790. Details below here. I am using Prop-Stick (God Bless the inventor's heart).·

Where am I:
1.· I completed retro-fitting my EMAXX w/ base board (heavy plastic), the HB25, Antenna for Aerocomm 4790 (picture below).
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I must thank CJ for helping w/ wiring of HB25 to my motors and of course his HB25 object. He was very prompt to my questions and provided timely help. If I had not had his help, I would have unknowingly burned my hb25. Thanks CJ!

2.· I have been spending some serious hrs w/ Aerocomm support. I recently purchased their Dev Kit (http://www.aerocomm.com/rf_transceiver_modules/rf_design_tools_wireless_development.htm) - it is a very useful kit. I was able to mess w/ it for a few days, read thru their datasheet, pin characteristics, EEPROM data and took some quality help from their Tech support guy (who by the way was very helpful). I eventually, took one of te AC4790s out of one of the dev boards and fabircated my own carrier board (picture below). AC4790 has 20 pins. But, for most part, I figured I would only need to tap into pins 1 (Session Indicator), 2 (Tx - from Prop to device), 3 (Rx - from device to Prop), 5 (GND), 9 (Rx Indicator), 10 and 11 (both need to be 3.3v VDD). and that's it. I needed pins 1 and 9 for my LEDs (pic below). My carrier board (very simple one BTW), has soldered LEDs and also exposes the pin 1 and 9 (as pin 1 and 4 carrier board) - if in case I need to further use those pins for future work. I am happy w/ the way it turned out.

Ver 1 of my : 4790 CB (w/o Session Status and Rx LEDs)








Recent Ver (w/ some modification to the pin 9 and LEDs)

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Here's the Pin layout diagram
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I have since hooked up my propstick (3 wires only) to my 4790 Carrier board (CB). And wrote some SPIN code to Tx to the other dev board and it works great (code attached). I also tested the Range. I am getting close to 4.5 miles - w/ a few neighborhood obstacles.



Next steps:
1. Parallax GPS module
2. Incorporate Ping, DS1620 and MEMSIC on base board

3. Study CMUCAM2 for navigation and road sensing (long sub-project by itself).


I still have long ways to go. The· need to take this one step at a time - especially since I'm no expert at electronics. But, I will keep at it.

I will keep posting the next updates as they occur.


Thanks again for all the help I have been receiving from folks here - I love Prop.

All comments, feedback, ideas, are welcome.

caio
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ALIBE - Artificial LIfe BEing. In search of building autonoumous land robot

http://fstop.crosscity.com/
http://icar.crosscity.com/


Post Edited (ALIBE) : 10/7/2006 9:51:49 PM GMT

CJ

Sounds like you are getting along with your project quite nicely, unfortunately your pics are local to your computer and not online at all

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Who says you have to have knowledge to use it?

I've killed a fly with my bare mind.

ALIBE

updated the src of the pics.

Here's the batch 1 (due to max 5 pics limit)

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ALIBE - Artificial LIfe BEing. In search of building autonoumous land robot

http://fstop.crosscity.com/
http://icar.crosscity.com/

ALIBE

batch 2

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ALIBE - Artificial LIfe BEing. In search of building autonoumous land robot

http://fstop.crosscity.com/
http://icar.crosscity.com/

ALIBE

batch 3


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ALIBE - Artificial LIfe BEing. In search of building autonoumous land robot

http://fstop.crosscity.com/
http://icar.crosscity.com/


Post Edited (ALIBE) : 10/7/2006 9:41:29 PM GMT

acantostega

Very cool!

Lord Vader

Wow! this looks really great. I am looking into doing a very similar project for fun.
I would like to have a wireless camera for mine and be able to communicate
with the robot with a good wireless range but all the RF modules I saw had very short
ranges. The Aerocomm transceivers look like they would work great though.
Thanks for posting this project!

If you don't mind me asking, why did you choose the Aerocomm 4790
over the Aerocomm 4490?, and did you have to get any licenses to use
them?
I'm just a beginner at robotics and especially RF stuff.

Thanks for all your help and good luck with the rest of the project!

Lord Vader

ALIBE

Hi Lord Vader,
thanks for the comments.

BTW, I'm a beginner too. If I can, anyone can [noparse]:)[/noparse]

I chose 4790 over 4490 for one reason. 4790 supports Point-to-Point and Point-to-Homestation. And, 4490 supports just P-2-Homebase. So, If I ever build another ALIBE to roam with the one I'm building right now, I can have the 2 ALIBEs talking w/ each other and also w/ my home base. Hope that helps answer your question

w/ re to licensing. When you buy the devkit from aerocomm, they provide you w/ the license already. So, that is taken care of. I'm not sure if you get a license just by buying the chip. One cool thing abt the dev kit is it's good price for the stuff you're getting. And, also, you can remove the chips from the dev board and use them separate - like how I'm. You can always take it back to the dev board, if and when you need to reset some of the EEPROM settings. Very cool.

hope that helps. I am hoping I will make good progress in the next couple of months. I am expecting to get my GPS Module and a few other parts so I can start plugging those in to the project.

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ALIBE - Artificial LIfe BEing. In search of building autonoumous land robot

http://ALIBE.crosscity.com/
http://fstop.crosscity.com/
http://icar.crosscity.com/


Post Edited (ALIBE) : 10/11/2006 9:34:56 PM GMT

Lord Vader

Thanks ALIBE, that did help. I also was looking at the dev kit and thought it
looked like a great deal, I just wasn't sure on the differences in chips.
Good luck with the project.

Lord Vader