Initial Project Update 1
Here is an early mockup I made in 3ds Max.
The idea is to have a PC mounted on a mobile platform that controls the platform's systems like motion, sensors, and gun turret, etc. That PC can then be controlled via wireless ethernet or cell phone dialup or whatever from another PC. Sort of like a mars rover.
In my back yard.
With guns...
The weapon system will be based around this thing from www.gatlingguns.com
I'll have to check with the ATF before I actually mount the thing I guess. Appently as long if it only fires one bullet per keypress I'm ok, otherwise its a machine gun
Right now I'm using my brother's battle bot as a prototype platform. He actually competed but got whupped in his first fight. So I borrowed the bot, got it working and then started chaning things to my liking.
I'm using a SV203 servo controller to interface between computer and the speed controller etc. http://www.pontech.com/products/sv200/
As you can see, it basically takes data (in the form of ascii commands) over a good ole serial port and controls servos, reads voltage, or acts like an on off switch.
The "controls servos' part is the important one. If you imagine any ole R/C car or whatever its basically got a device that takes input from a radio control and moves servos and speed controllers. Instead of doing it with a radio handset, this thing does it from a serial cable.
This allows me TONS of flexability. I can plug in the SV203 and control it with commands over hypertermal, or I can write my own software and do it with a joystick, or a gui of buttons and sliders. I can also set up client/server software so that I can send commands over tcp/ip from a remote pc to the pc that actually is connected to the SV203.
Then if I want to I can just replace the SV203 with any stander R/C reciever and use a radio control to dive it around.
Here it is connected to my laptop and a pair of servos. You can see the software that comes with the board on my screen.
Now that I've given you guys a brief intro to the project, here is a chronicle of what has gone on so far.
The first task was to get my brothers battle bot in working order. Its basically a box with 4 14.4 volt Drill motors in it and some kinda chainsaw thingy. It was the first robot he built but it turned out pretty nice. You can stand on the thing and drive yourself around and when the batteries are at full charge you cant stop it as long as it has traction. It was in pretty bad shape when I got it though. It has been impaled on the spike strips and some of the stuff inside was gutted when he was helping another team out with their robot.
I had to first figure out how it was supposed to work and then get it all wired up agian and make it work.
Here I am with the speed controller. Its a $300 dollar unit so I was really nervous playing with it.
I finally got it to work. Here you can see his pimping R/C controller. The reciever is that little black box above the speed controller (the blue metal box).
Once I actually got it working again (and crashing it around the office and destroying a few cardboard boxes)it was a simple matter of replacing the R/C controller with my SV203. At that point I could control the wheels with little sliders on the screen. However this was pretty lame because I was thethered to the darn thing with a serial cable.
So as a test we set up a quick wireless lan. Then I just remote desktoped onto the laptop so that I could control the robot from my desktop pc. Now this was a terribly terribly ineffecient way to do things. But it was just a test and we didn't have time to do anything different.
Here's how it looked, please don't laugh too hard
We were doing this with my roomates way expensive laptop so we had to make sure it was in a nice protective box with packing peanuts and everything. Here is a video of how it all worked out. Crude but it showed the idea was sound.
http://www.cp-tel.net/pasqualy/land...controltest.wmv (17megs)
The idea is to have a PC mounted on a mobile platform that controls the platform's systems like motion, sensors, and gun turret, etc. That PC can then be controlled via wireless ethernet or cell phone dialup or whatever from another PC. Sort of like a mars rover.
In my back yard.
With guns...
The weapon system will be based around this thing from www.gatlingguns.com
I'll have to check with the ATF before I actually mount the thing I guess. Appently as long if it only fires one bullet per keypress I'm ok, otherwise its a machine gun
Right now I'm using my brother's battle bot as a prototype platform. He actually competed but got whupped in his first fight. So I borrowed the bot, got it working and then started chaning things to my liking.
I'm using a SV203 servo controller to interface between computer and the speed controller etc. http://www.pontech.com/products/sv200/
As you can see, it basically takes data (in the form of ascii commands) over a good ole serial port and controls servos, reads voltage, or acts like an on off switch.
The "controls servos' part is the important one. If you imagine any ole R/C car or whatever its basically got a device that takes input from a radio control and moves servos and speed controllers. Instead of doing it with a radio handset, this thing does it from a serial cable.
This allows me TONS of flexability. I can plug in the SV203 and control it with commands over hypertermal, or I can write my own software and do it with a joystick, or a gui of buttons and sliders. I can also set up client/server software so that I can send commands over tcp/ip from a remote pc to the pc that actually is connected to the SV203.
Then if I want to I can just replace the SV203 with any stander R/C reciever and use a radio control to dive it around.
Here it is connected to my laptop and a pair of servos. You can see the software that comes with the board on my screen.
Now that I've given you guys a brief intro to the project, here is a chronicle of what has gone on so far.
The first task was to get my brothers battle bot in working order. Its basically a box with 4 14.4 volt Drill motors in it and some kinda chainsaw thingy. It was the first robot he built but it turned out pretty nice. You can stand on the thing and drive yourself around and when the batteries are at full charge you cant stop it as long as it has traction. It was in pretty bad shape when I got it though. It has been impaled on the spike strips and some of the stuff inside was gutted when he was helping another team out with their robot.
I had to first figure out how it was supposed to work and then get it all wired up agian and make it work.
Here I am with the speed controller. Its a $300 dollar unit so I was really nervous playing with it.
I finally got it to work. Here you can see his pimping R/C controller. The reciever is that little black box above the speed controller (the blue metal box).
Once I actually got it working again (and crashing it around the office and destroying a few cardboard boxes)it was a simple matter of replacing the R/C controller with my SV203. At that point I could control the wheels with little sliders on the screen. However this was pretty lame because I was thethered to the darn thing with a serial cable.
So as a test we set up a quick wireless lan. Then I just remote desktoped onto the laptop so that I could control the robot from my desktop pc. Now this was a terribly terribly ineffecient way to do things. But it was just a test and we didn't have time to do anything different.
Here's how it looked, please don't laugh too hard
We were doing this with my roomates way expensive laptop so we had to make sure it was in a nice protective box with packing peanuts and everything. Here is a video of how it all worked out. Crude but it showed the idea was sound.
http://www.cp-tel.net/pasqualy/land...controltest.wmv (17megs)
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