Tuesday, June 8, 2010

bugz and patches

Tiny, Blacky and Rotko - the new fauna in my room. Rotko ran last week out of batteries. And they are not very clever yet. The problem is, if you want to buy a programmable robot, the prices jump over 200 Euros. These hexbugs are, unfortunately, not made to be reprogrammed. But they are very cheap and with more enthusiasm and skills in electrical engineering, these creatures can be far more interesting. Let's see what will happen :) We formed a group of 3 people (me, Ray and Jonas) and now we are waiting for the delivery of the new components. Here's our guide.
To be honest, the el. schemes seem to me like Egyptian hieroglyphs. But that's why we have Jonas, who happens to be an e-Ing. Ray said, he hasn't programmed in Assembler, but he graduated the "Hochschule" (something like university in which you learn practical things like programming rather than just the naked theory). Therefore I believe in his skills. I have almost no experience in Assembler (except the fuzzy programming of these step motors in the TI: technische Informatik, 5 years ago). But the good news is, that at the beginning you don't have to be so creative. Just follow the steps, there are enough resources on the Internet. However, if we want to make our bugs really smart, then we should prepare for sweating.



2 comments:

  1. Freakin' cool actually :) any vids on those things moving? btw what are you to make them do?

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  2. :) hi, yes, I have some videos and I'm going to post some of them soon. The bugs are really very interesting creatures, but at the moment they can't do very much. We want to make them react on light and for example peep when they need new batteries. Also, I want them to sing something, but I'm afraid it will be a challenge due to the memory. Oh, yes, they should be also able to blink with eyes. :)

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