13 Oct 08 Robot: Initial Hardware Order [rev 2]

Follow on from: http://www.adamsinfo.com/the-robot-hardware-list-wheel-plan-more-ideas/

Discuss in the forums

I’ve given up on trying to source separate motors, motor controllers, encoders and brackets. I’m concerned that my knowledge of mechanics and motors is limited, and that I’m going to spend too much time and money trying to build a movement package myself.

I’ve decided to go for a good motor/controller/encoder package here:

http://www.active-robots.com/products/motorsandwheels/rd01-drive.shtml

I’ll need two of these, and will have to replace the wheels with the omni directional wheel things I found and linked to in my last post.

I’ll drill the brackets into a thin metal plate, and start building perspex on top. I don’t seem to have paid enough attention to battery/device weight/motor/power and am concerned that the motor and battery combination will not move the device. I don’t yet have an idea of how much it will weigh, but I’ve realized that the perspex is going to have to be as thin and light as possible, and I’m going to have to bear weight in mind with any unnecessary or redundant extra parts.
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Tags: alix, APNIC, atheros, CF, embedded, i2c, Linux robot, motor, picolcd, Robot

01 Oct 08 APNIC Box – Linux on a Mikrotik 532a, Part 2 – Hardware Modifications

Follow on from 01 Oct 08 APNIC Box – Linux on a Mikrotik 532a, Part 1

Custom Hardware Modifications

Here’s a labelled image of the inside of the device. You can also look towards the bottom left of the image for my simple solder modifications. Enlarge the image to see the labels.

1. External 2.4GHz/5GHz antenna. Same on opposite side.
2. 5V solder point
3. 5V connector for miniPCI USB card
4. 2x 2USB Headers. 1 Header in use providing 2x USB interfaces, one to regular host connector for mass storage or other usb connection. Other port for picoLCD on top
5. 512MB CF card
6. miniPCI USB controller

On the underside of the board there is a single miniPCI socket which houses an Atheros 5212 802.11a/b/g miniPCI card. It has two antenna outputs which run under the board and two the two external antennae. I haven’t taken a picture of this but if anyone really wants to see it, I will power down the device, get a picture of it and post it here.

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Tags: 2.4ghz, 532a, 5ghz, 802.11, antenna, APNIC, APNIC Box, atheros 5212, Linux, mikrotik, minipci, minipci usb, picolcd, routerboard, routerboard 532a, solder, soldering, usb interfaces, usb ports

01 Oct 08 APNIC Box – Linux on a Mikrotik 532a, Part 1 – The Device

I put this device together for fun sometime around the start of 2007. The ideas that spawned this was using OpenWRT on a Linksys WRT54G access point. A surprisingly powerful and full linux distro with all kinds of advanced capabilities running on a Linksys wireless router which I’d previously thought to be a reasonably dumb device with computing power more comparable to a calculator than a PC. The project opened my eyes to embedded devices, and I wondered what device base I should start with. To cut a long story short and for reasons that I can’t even remember anymore I came across the Mikrotik Routerboard 532A and decided that I should start with that.

Conception

Here’s a picture of the device from the outside with some labels, view the full image to see them.

1. Status LEDs. Blue at the bottom left shows it’s on, orange at the top right shows that there’s wifi activity.
2. Ethernet (eth0)
3. Standard Serial Console (57600, 8 N 1)
4. Ethernet (eth1)
5. Ethernet (eth2)

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Tags: adsl2+, APNIC, APNIC Box, distro, ethernet, isp, linksys router, Linux, Linux routing, modem, openwrt, picolcd, public IP, redundancy, routerboard 532a, serial console, switch