Dave Harpe
New Member
Well, after a lot of reading and tinkering, and digging for parts so I don't have to buy any more than I really need, I came up with my first Picaxe robot. It uses a 20M2, and has 3 boards so far, the board with the 20M2 on it, the motor controller, and what you might call an "everything else" board, which interfaces between the previous two and everything on the chassis. So far there are no sensors, and I am thinking about what to add. I would like to have some kind of remote sensing if I can find it at a price my budget can handle, it moves a little too fast to depend on bumper switches. The controller is very precise, and can run at a very low speed, so maybe I will just do that and add bumper switches for now. Testing the controller with the trimpots, I was able to make it go in very large circles, and cover close to the same area each time. It works well.
Presently I am impressed with the fact that this processor can be programmed in BASIC easily by an old geezer like me, and it has a lot of capabilities for the price. For me that's huge. I am not impressed with the speed, I ran a very short loop which just turns on and off a pin, and put a scope on the pin. It takes 16 milliseconds to do just one loop. There are a lot of things I won't be able to do with this because of that. This is actually on par with the SWTPC 6800 I was using back in the 70s, when running a program in BASIC. By now, I thought everything would be much faster, even when running a high level language. Of course, the desktops are MUCH faster, but they are nowhere near this cheap or portable.
Well, that's how it stands as of now. Some people name their robots, and I don't know yet what I would call this one. That will probably come as I learn more about it, and what can be done with it.
Presently I am impressed with the fact that this processor can be programmed in BASIC easily by an old geezer like me, and it has a lot of capabilities for the price. For me that's huge. I am not impressed with the speed, I ran a very short loop which just turns on and off a pin, and put a scope on the pin. It takes 16 milliseconds to do just one loop. There are a lot of things I won't be able to do with this because of that. This is actually on par with the SWTPC 6800 I was using back in the 70s, when running a program in BASIC. By now, I thought everything would be much faster, even when running a high level language. Of course, the desktops are MUCH faster, but they are nowhere near this cheap or portable.
Well, that's how it stands as of now. Some people name their robots, and I don't know yet what I would call this one. That will probably come as I learn more about it, and what can be done with it.