Just a dad with no real robotics skills needs help with circuit board!

[rbrown.i.g]

OK, I am a dad who's kid volunteered him to build a robot for a school project...Not really skilled at any part of electronics...I am having problems building the circuit board and would pay for a board if anyone would be willing to put it together and program it for me.

It would need to be set up for the 4AA battery holder and 9V battery connections if anyone would be interested.

[newInRobotics]

Why not to buy ready made circuit board, say something from Arduino range?

[rbrown.i.g]

would it do the same thing as the board that is described in the $50 robot tutorial?

[newInRobotics]

Very common Arduino Uno board is much more capable than the one in $50 Robot  Although, You'd have to program it Yourself as code provided in $50 Robot tutorial is only suitable for that specific microcontroller. For programming you can use something like Webbot Project Designer, it is GUI tool for programming, almost everything can be achieved by Drag & Drop. To get $50 Robot going you need to understand how use ADC (analog to digital) feature of microcontroller to get voltage readings from photo-resistors and how to use PWM feature of microcontroller to set servo motor speed.

[rbrown.i.g]

Therein lies the problem....I am not at all capable of programming the micro controller....or writing the program for it. I must sound pretty pathetic to someone who knows how to, but I am just a regular guy who has spent the last 35 years in the printing industry. Ask me anything about commercial print or marketing and I can make your head spin with facts, theories and solutions, but this is over my head and then some! 

[newInRobotics]

It does not sound pathetic - one cannot know everything.

As mentioned before, You can try Webbot's Project Designer, it's drag and drop, no code writing needed

[ErikY]

OK, I am a dad who's kid volunteered him to build a robot for a school project...Not really skilled at any part of electronics...I am having problems building the circuit board and would pay for a board if anyone would be willing to put it together and program it for me.

It would need to be set up for the 4AA battery holder and 9V battery connections if anyone would be interested.

Can I ask what you want it to be programmed to do?

Does this have to be a specific robot, with specific functionality? Or, just any robot for a school project?

I agree 100% with going the Arduino route, however, I would probably suggest using the Arduino software as well, over WebbotLib.

WebbotLib is absolutely awesome, but you need to do a lot to set it up, and you need a programmer, which can be frustrating, whereas Arduino is incredibly easy to setup the software, and you can program with a very simple USB cable.

Depending on what you want to do, you may have to alter some code, but there are a ton of really good examples with Arduino to make it easier, and an incredible community to help as well.

[rbrown.i.g]

Maybe I should back up and explain my situation a little better. I have helped my daughter build the $50 robot from start to finish. We have the base, with wheels, the servo have been altered to rotate 360 degrees, the optic sensors are assembled and we attempted to make a circuit board according to the schematic given in the $50 robot tutorial (which has cost us about $150 thus far because we didn't have any of the tools necessary to build a robot for $50), but failed...ie an error when connecting the AVR programmer to the board that comes up as "short circuit" in the error message...my guess is a bridge in the connections because of a bad solder job.

So I am out looking for a solution that can plug into this situation and hopefully solve our problem.

One solution would be to find someone who has done this before that would be willing to send a working circuit board to us.

I should add that we were trying to download the program that is given on the site to the robot...I would be way out of my league to try and calculate the code that the robot would need to operate.

[ErikY]

Gotcha, this makes sense.

If you wanted to, you could PROBABLY use an Arduino UNO, and replace the ATmega328P that it comes with, with the ATMega8 that you are using for your $50 robot, and you can probably use your programmer and upload the code, as the Arduino UNO has the ISP connections.

I am a pretty new to robotics, but I have successfully completed a few robots, including the $50 robot, so if you want to PM me, I would be willing to help out in any way I can, even possibly building and sending the completed board if you wanted.

[rbrown.i.g]

ErikY. If you think that solution would work I will give it a try.

I left a message for you in your inbox...I have to run now but will be back at it tomorrow for a while.

Thank you!

[ErikY]

As I mentioned in the PM, if you would like to go the Arduino Uno route, swapping out the microcontroller and programming yourself, I will post how I would do it here, and others can chime in if they have better ideas.

If you would prefer to have a board made for you, and even programmed, that I would keep to PM and off the main boards.

Happy to help you either way.