Lance Orner

Engineering and Family Life in Sparks, NV

Jameco Contest Results

May 2010

Although we didn't place, and I never expected to, we were listed in the contest results for the Jameco Robot build contest. Woot!

Roby the Costerbot

April 26, 2010

Latest project: a light activated robot mounted on a couple of CD platters. Sarah helped build it, and is operating it in one of the pictures. She named it “Roby”.
Contains: Arduino processor, CDS light sensors, and two hobby sensors modified for continuous rotation. Built for http://www.makezine.com/robotbuild/

Roby the Costerbot

April 29, 2010

Roby the Coasterbot has been tinkered with and adjusted with the goal of submission into Make Magazine’s Robot Build. This is my first attempt to make a robot, spurred on by this contest, and I’ve learned a lot, and Sarah had fun helping build it and test it out. She’s gotten very good at replacing components that tend to fall out of the breadboard when he’s being carried around.

Final parts list:

  • 2 CD platters with standoffs
  • 2 Medium hobby servos modified for continuous rotation
  • Ardweeny (breadboardable Arduino clone) as main processor
  • 7805 voltage regulator and circuit to supply +5V
  • 2 curved loops of wire that touch a ground pin going low when they hit an obstacle. Into pin D2 and D3 on processor.
  • Previous models also had 2 CDS light censors wired into a voltage divider into pin A0 and A1 to give light input potential
  • Powered by a single 9V battery stored between servos

It also uses the only spare breadboard I had, which was obviously too big for the CDs, but gave me more room to experiment. I’ll keep this platform around for a while since I’ve got an IR sensor on order that hasn’t arrived yet that I’m also curious to try how it works.

This was a fun project. Using this contest as a reason to get going, I was able to experiment with servos, and I’m looking forward to making new things move.

Thank you Make Magazine for putting this on, and I have new respect for Jameco Electronics. Their prices are actually very good, and with ground shipping, I usually get what I needed in about a day.  I’m sure I’ll be order many more parts now that I’m building things again.

Followup: The Sharp IR sensor (2Y0A02) finally came in, and it’s the medium range sensor, and after hooking it up to the analog pin, it doesn’t seem to recognize objects within, say, 10 inches, which doesn’t really work for this application. I took it back off and used the touch switches — those worked better.