Hey Chris Schur, I checked out your videos. Very cool.

I have similar visions for my robot. Having a power station in the room with an IR beacon. One difference though. I was thinking about including a line follower and using that to guide the robot the last couple feet into the charger.

Corey

Wow, looks like its been almost 2 years since I participated with this group. I've been checking up on the articles and browsing the diary entries during that time, but I havn't been working on any of my own projects.

I started looking through my robot stuff about two months ago and started getting the itch to work on it again. I quickly recalled that I was stuck tring to come up with a design for the shaft encoders. Using encoders that had been salvaged from printers or tring to incorportate something off the shelf just wasn't working out. A friend of mine owns his own machine shop and a trip to visit him opened my eyes to a whole new set of options. His equipment is the type you use to fabricate very, very large parts, but I was able to learn the basics of lathe and mill work.

Anyway to make a long story short I purchased a mini- mill and mini-lathe last month and have been working on fabricating new axels and shaft encoders. The mill and lathe are made by a company in China called Sieg. I have been very pleased with the equipment so far. Sieg sells their equipement wholesale and it is branded and resold by several different companies including Harbor Frieght, Grizzley and Micro-Mark.

I purchased mine from Micro-Mark. Ask me what I think of Micro-Mark's customer service (hint: it won't be a positive review). There are numerous other sources for the equipment and accessories. www.littlemachineshop.com seems to have a wide selection and great customer service. They also have alot of educational material on using the equipment.

My website is in need of being updated. When I get some new stuff out there I'll let everyone know.

All, I've finally got around to moving my website. You can find me at www.coreygates.com/robotics . My plan it to post and maintain a repository of datasheets and online manuals for various chips and modules. One of the datasheets that can be found on my web site is for the Motorola 6808 8-bit processor. I've done some searching and my site may have the only online copy out there.

There will also be current info on my robotics and electronics projects.

Greetings all, Been a while since I've posted anything of substance. I've just been too busy doing other things. I did get some time this week to work on the robot and update the web site. I also purchased a sonar unit. When I get that up and working I'll post the details on the web site as well.

oops, never mind. I found the information in one of my old dairy entries. The Company is www.acroname.com. The kit is a polaoid interface kit and sells for $49.00, I have one on order and should arrive in a few days.