Robotpet.

Have not made much time to work on special projects. One thing I need to start back on is robopet.  There is nothing real super snazzy about this unit although it could be. mainly I will use it for carrying snacks back and forth from the kitchen during sporting events. There will be a second level not currently attached to hold the goodies. More information about the unit follows.



Electronics:

Using an old Pentium I computer, usb wireless, DC battery power, and compact flash with an ide interface.

Made a special wiring hardness to connect the parallel port with the electronics. Now I need to start testing the electronics for the motor control. Hoping the h-bridge can take the current. If not, I think I have a IC that will. Worst case scenarios is to do it the old fashion way with transistors. After that, everything should fall into place.

Using a standard power supply to test the unit, but it will run on battery when I finish it. Since the motherboard is AT and the DC-DC PS is ATX, I had to make a special cable from scratch to interface the two. Tested the cable and it works.

Have the wireless working via a usb interface set up to work with a specific router via the mac address and the zone. Albeit the wireless is 11 mb, more than fast enough to receive and send communication

No sensors added yet.

Software:

The Linux OS is installed.  The OS resides on a compact flash.The iso file for the version of the Ubuntu distribution also resides on the flash drive and gets mounted as a loop.

Using my own home grown robot control software gather data from sensors and to operate the unit. Eventually, I want to make an autonomous unit.  This unit will be more like a remote controlled car via wifi.

Code to control the motors has already been tested and is working.   Using a hardwired connection, already tested client/server socket programming to communicate with and control the unit. That should be way more efficient and possibly more secure than using a web server per se..

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