Pololu

The Return of the Mice

Long time no posts, my course has been keeping me very busy...I have hardly had anytime for mouses :'(

Anyway heres some very rough designs i have done over time for various DC mice...

This mouse I plan to build some day! - i have all the motors, Ball race bearings, axels, wheels gears etc - its just a case of finding some time to build!

Heres an early desing of the motor/gear layout. It has 6:1 reduction, and I plan to used Mouse encoders on the Motor Side of the gear train.

I'm hoping the Sensors as shown below, (well the side refelctive looking ones) will be digitally filtered. I want 6 of these sensors, and i have got to do some tests to see if a dsPIC has enough oomph to run 6 FIR filters at a respectable rate. If not i will do some simpler approximations by removing ambient level digitally, and linearisng. Just a nice thought to remove ambient via a digital low pass filter.

Done some rough maths, i maybe able to get the encoder resolution upto 840 PPR at the wheel, so more than enough accuracy. My stepper mouse is my main efforsts at the moment though but i thought i would share my exploration into the world of DC mice.

LEGO NXT

Not long had my lego mindstorms NXT set, and i am very impressed!

The motors have encoders, to the nearest degree of output shaft have reasonable torque and speed. The ligght sensors also seem to work extremely well off micromouse walls!

Heres some webcam shot of a wallfollower i have been experimenting with Allan. Working quite nice now :).




Heres a video of a drive train i am thinking of using too, known as a synchro drive. Each wheel can turn in any direction on the spot and go in any direction, could be very useful - Thumper worked in such a way:

Homemade PCB's

Been making PCB's lately, they have come out quite good IMO.

Heres a SSOP to "normal" adapter (it is not dil, just fits in veroboard)

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I think it will work ok :). I'm making two, one for a girl i know, and the other for myself :).

Heres my micromouse microcontroller PCB (compared to the adapter for a size difference)

Just got to drill the board, solder the compoenents and laquer them and test ;). More progress info soon.

Circuitry

I'm currently building the micro controller board for my micromouse, hopefully it should be crashing around the maze in a week! I shall post pictures and possibly a video of it runnign soon.

My Micromouse

Heres my micromouse so far, its for my final year project at uni and is going to be run at the the compeition in June and at the RoboTIC compeition in November. Still have not got a name for it but I am happy with what it looks like so far.






























Its a stepper based mouse, using a PIC 18F series microcontroller and a microrobot.com stepper board, and Sanyo Denki Stepper Motors.

My DC mouse i have designed is going to be called (goint to be built after graduation):
SPEEDY GONZALEZ!

ICD2 Goodness

Been working on my ICD2 clone, its coming along good.

Heres the finished icd, based on the stolz design.

No more guesswork for me :-D.

Welome

Micromouse Stuff coming Soon!