Robots?

[Beerina]

Does anybody here build robots? I mean things like Lego Mindstorms, or more complicated stuff with little development boards and sensors and motors and stuff?

I've been working with Mindstorms (v2, not the newer v3) but have been looking at all these cool ads in Robot and Servo magazines. I don't wanna jump in and just start buying stuff without knowing what one can do.

Would I get a dev board with I2C and just load up on I2C sensors and motor modules? Is that the current state of the art in home robotics?

Also, I would prefer these things, because I want to migrate some of my work on Legos:

1. Wireless communication with my PC and the ability to transfer data back and forth programmatically. I want to be able to control the hardware via the PC.

I built such a method on Legos, to send sensor data back and then send motor commands back to the device. It was plenty quick.

2. Have a C-like language available to program the device itself.

3. Sample C source code, or a simple code framework, that runs on that particular board, and knows how to exercise some devices, I2C or otherwise, including the wireless communications.

 

[RussDill]

It sounds like you are getting ready to experiment with ROS (Robotics Operating System), or similar systems. The advantage being that you can really do anything you want. The disadvantage being you can really do anything that you want. The answer to "how do I do xyz" is often "it depends".

Something like the Beaglebone black will give you limitless possibilities, but no prebuilt solutions. Pretty much the opposite of mindstorms. Sure you have I2C, SPI, GPIOs, quadrature decoders, PWMs, and even realtime processing units, but as far as interfacing them, or finding an existing interface, you are pretty much on your own. Same for software. Sometimes you can adapt software, hardware, and libraries others have written, other times you have to rework them, or even write your own.