$50 expansions

[Joesavage1]

I was just thinking and had a couple of ideas. First of all if i decided i wanted the robot to follow IR light then if i replaced the photocells with IR detectors, and then used a TV remove or something to control it would this work?

Second of all i belive there are spare microcontroller ports or chips or wtv (the connectors) left on the sensors and servos side of things, could these be used as a $50 expansion (obviously with a slightly modified code)?


Third, is it possible using the thing above that i could make some of the extra servo's remote controlled or would this need some type of reciver instead of using a microcontroller?



Thanks

(You can post some cool expansion ideas too if u like =D)

Joe

[cooldog]

I was just thinking and had a couple of ideas. First of all if i decided i wanted the robot to follow IR light then if i replaced the photocells with IR detectors, and then used a TV remove or something to control it would this work?

if you replace the photocells with ir range finders they will follow ir light without any modification to the code, but i am unsure about being able to control the robot useing a remote

[RiffRaff]

Second of all i belive there are spare microcontroller ports or chips or wtv (the connectors) left on the sensors and servos side of things, could these be used as a $50 expansion (obviously with a slightly modified code)?

Joe,

There are 5 servo ports and 6 sensor ports on the microcontroller, so there is some room for expansion.  What I was wondering is whether a modified version of the microcontroller board(from the $50 robot) could easily be built with more ports for servos?  Say, with a larger microcontroller chip, maybe?

I want to build a biped robot, and the design I want to play with requires 6 servos just for the legs.

Riff

[Razor Concepts]

Basically all the pins on the microcontroller have the capability of driving servos - just modify the configure_ports() method to change the ports to an output.

[RiffRaff]

Basically all the pins on the microcontroller have the capability of driving servos - just modify the configure_ports() method to change the ports to an output.

Oh, how cool is that?  Is the modification something done in the programming?

And let me apologize here for all the stupid questions that I'm going to ask.  I am into robots for the long haul, but I have a LOT to learn.

Riff

[Razor Concepts]

Yep. In the datasheet for the mega168 they have a list of the pins and what they can do.

[RiffRaff]

Yep. In the datasheet for the mega168 they have a list of the pins and what they can do.

Is the same true of the ATMEGA8-16?

[RiffRaff]

Looking at the ATMEGA8 datasheets I see that ports B,C & D are all I/O ports.  So that's 23 I/O ports, 8 8-bit ports, 7-7bit ports and however many (out of 8-ports you can use in place of whatever 'special functions' you won't need.

All in all that give me plenty of servos for running a bi-ped walker.