Sequoia Robotics

The Sequoia Robotics Club started a few months ago. Our first project is a simple bot that will move forward until it bumps into something, backs up, turns, and continues on its way. There were a couple of reasons to choose this simple bot as a first project:

• Demonstrate all the fundamental elements of a bot. By keeping it simple, we can focus on the basics.
• Give everyone a chance to make mistakes as cheaply as possible. When your learning to solder you are bound to fry a board or two. It's a lot better to fry a $15 board than a board that's part of a $100 kit ...
• Make members feel comfortable with stuff we've designed ourselves, rather than kits designed by others. I worried that if the first project we worked on was a robot kit from someone else, that we'd be reluctant to put together a design of our own. Better to start with our own right off that bat.

The bot is put together from a few simple components. It wasn't as cheap as I'd like, but well worth the cost for a simple bot that demonstrates all the basics!

• Control: Modern Device Bare Bones Board, an Arduino clone. A very versatile board! $13
  
• Sensor: Solarbotics "whisker" sensor. $5
  
• Drive Train:
  Motor Controller: Solarbotics L298 Compact Motor Driver. $17.
  Motors: Solarbotics GM8 (2). $12
  Wheels: Solarbotics GM series plastic wheels. $8
• Platform: smallcardboard boxes! FREE ...
• Total cost, about $55.
  

We our Solarbotics stuff locally from Hobby Engineering.

I expect that our next bot will be a Solarbotics "sumovore" with an atmel board. We'll see ...