Because of my new found googlebilty, sometimes I get some people emailing me asking for help/recommendations. I like to bring them here into a community setting so more people can help, and it's documented to help others with similar questions. Here's one such person. I'm going to answer in a follow on in this thread. Everyone else feel free to chime in.
The email follows:
I am working on an autonomous robot and I needed to google some information, and luckily
google showed me ur website
Its the first time I visited your website and woooooooooooooooooooooooooow
really... IT IS AMAZING, i'm going to tell my friends about it
It gaaaaave me a lot of ideas..... especially the PS2controller library and you really seem an expert (in almost everything =P) so if it is ok, I need your feedback for some points. I was working on a project that is almost exactly as urs except that i'm using arduino mega (please don't tell me that will cause problems in the future)
Im using a 4 wheeled differential drive robot (2 geared motors each draw 10A)
Im using a motor controller I baught, changes speed based on analog value using arduino pwm
I am using an EM406a GPS
I am using HMC6343, a 3-axis digital compass with tilt-compensation
I am using SRF04 range finders to avoid obstacles
I am using apc220 wireless RF modules (1.2km LOS using 433MHz)
A mini IR camera and AV wireless transmitter
So far, I am testing each system alone and everything seems to be working perfectly
I am now at the path planning stage... should I point the robot to the target and move straight (shortest distance) or is there another better way?
Is arduino mega good enough? or I should switch to axon (please say its ok)?
I also wanted to draw maps on the computer based on the sensor values from the robot, can labview do that? Since I am going to have ultrasonic sensors on the right, left and front of the robot, I wondered if i can use these values to plot the map on a computer (the operater) using a program and then do the path planning there and just send directions to the robot, since u can store more maps this way. if you have any suggestions please let me know
I am really admired by ur work and I am ready to make a donation to ur website, U really helped a lot and gave me a lot of ideas. I have accounts at different forums but ur website, woooow, I can use it as a guideline for my project, it gave me many ideas. Now i know it is possible to link it to goooooogle earth instead of sending values through wireless, what a great idea!!!
NOW because if ur ps2 library, I am going to add it for sure, and its going to be a semi-autonomous . I loove this library
and I really liked ur labview interface, it looks so coooooool. Unfortunately, I know nothing about labView but I have to ask, are you willing to share the labview platform u created or even sell it?