Don's Robotics Page
TracksBot

This year (2009) I decided to get started in robotics as another hobby. After thinking about what part of robotics interests me and is not too expensive I began my path down the direction these WEB pages describe. There is much information available on robotics in its many forms but for this WEB presentation my focus will stay within these described projects in both hardware and software. My first robot named TracksBot is a combination of hardware from mainly two companies.
The chassis, called a Tri-Track, is from Lynxmotion.com . It includes two 12vDC geared motors. It comes as a assemble it yourself kit well documented. The Pan/Tilt kit also came from them. Its use on TracksBot is for vertical and horizontal sensor positioning.
The controller, a Serializer WL is from RoboticsConnection (no longer available). It serves motor speed and direction, analog input, digital in/out, servo drive and includes an I2C port for extension. Its maximum DC voltage input is 12vDC. There are headers for A TTL level serial port and external h-bridge control. It has a socket for either USB, Serial, Bluetooth or XBee modules. The Serializer WL controls two DC motors and has headers for quadrature encoder feedback. The Serializer is not a programmable unit rather it takes its commands from an external source and returns values for sensors. This is an advantage in that with Bluetooth or XBee you can have any computer for the brains of the bot. This is how I am proceeding now. My Sony laptop is used for developing Visual C# console and windows applications that do all the heavy processing utilizing the Serializer library.
Hardware and Sensors
For more information Email Don

© , 2009 - 2030

Created:4/25/2009, by Don Lewis, Last update 04/01/2018