I'll try to put the kit together next week, I do realize it's a "blind" robot that I have, planning to add some sensors to it after I become more comfortable with the platform. Still have a couple of questions:

1. What does PBIO board do and why do we need it? I searched the forum and read the description on your product page, still not clear.

2. Regarding camera, it looks like you have something working with CMUcam, but then the turret is discontinued, and I remember reading from somewhere that you are working on something with AVRcam, just curious, are you leaning toward AVRcam now?

Sounds like if I put CMUcam and Traxster together, I got myself a autonamous vehicle, coz CMUcam supposely can do some onboard image processing such as tracking colors and shapes, and it has 2 servo output, potentially I can use that to control 2 traxster motors, is that right?

In anycase, thanks for all your help and I'm sure I'll have some serious fun with the kit.

I got your call yesterday, but didn't get a chance to respond.   Those standoffs are going out today, so you should have them by the end of the week.

1. The PBIO is actually very useful.  You can use the LED outputs for debugging, or to show state information (e.g. the robot is in a specific mode -e.g. searching).  You can use the Push button inputs to tell your application to perform some action (e.g. start/stop searching).  

2. We no longer sell the CMUcam2+ cameras, as there are lots of great vision apps available (Roborealm and OpenCV) that can perform the vision processing using much cheaper web cams.  This requires a wireless camera that transmits video back to a receiver, that plugs into your PC (which also controls the Serializer/Robot).  Roborealm has a Traxster module that you can use as well to get you up and going quickly.

Best Regards!

Jason Summerour
President,
Summerour Robotics Corporation
www.roboticsconnection.com

Thanks for the post!  I'll check out those cameras...might be a nice accessory for our kits.

Please keep us posted on your progress!

I have started putting together a Serializer .NET Lib/Linux how-to using Ubuntu, Mono, and Mono-Develop.  I'll try to get it finished in a few weeks, and post it.  It makes it REALLY easy to interface the Serializer w/ Linux apps.

Best Regards!

Jason Summerour
President,
Summerour Robotics Corporation
www.roboticsconnection.com

Camera image ==802.11==> router / Computer (image processing, generate camera commands) ==RS232==> serializer ==(? protocal)==> camera servo

Thanks

Is there any mechanism to sync 2 drive motors? Say, if I give a command "mogo 1:75 2:75", theoretically 2 motors would run at the same speed and the vehicle will run a straight line. But in reality, there are a lot of factors that would impact the motor speed, for example, the frictions of the axles can't be exactly the same, and the tension of the tracks could be different as well. Maybe the answer is obvious but I am new to this and couldn't figure it out.

Thanks for your help.

Serialier is up, bluetooth connection works fine, I'm using hyper terminal under WinXP. Tried a few motor command and all works fine.

I connected a Hitec 311 standard servo to the serializer, first on pin 9 of GPIO row, issued a "servo 2:35" command, no response. Tried other pins, still the same. I checked my servo power jumper, it's on the right 2 pins, default position. Servo is a brand new one, I'm a bit clueless here, please help!

Thanks much

Best Regards,

Jason Summerour
President,
Summerour Robotics Corporation
www.roboticsconnection.com

1.) With the new Serializer v3.0, we have tons more room for more functionality.  One of the things we've been discussing is adding code to ensure the motors drive synchronously together, using the encoder inputs.  This is something that we might try to add this spring (too much to do before then).

2.) Since no two motors are ever the same, play with the speeds (using pwm) to try to find the pwm value for each motor, where they seem to operate at the same speed.   One might be 100, while the other is only 96.  Use that in your applications.  Also, using the PID functionality will definitely keep the bot driving straighter than using PWM, as it attempts to keep the motors at a sustained speed (even though the logic isn't linked between left/right motors).   You can also tweak the PID motor speed values like above to further improve straight driving.

3.) As the tracks/motors break in, you might have to tweak this, as they will have less friction.

Best Regards!

Jason Summerour
President,
Summerour Robotics Corporation
www.roboticsconnection.com

Servo Power Supply Jumper