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Introduction

Well, after the couple of comments from this blog, Maus LearningBot - Family Challenge One (State Machine), I've done some reading, recoding and experimenting with some of the concepts suggested of how state machines should work.  I've now dubbed this version 2 and it seems to work just as well as version 1.  I'll try to explain myself as I walk through the code.

Why a State Machine?

Introduction

We have put together our learning robot and have switched out our Arduino stack consisting of the Arduinio, screw shield and arduino motor shield for one of Ro-Bot-X's Robot Builder's Rduino v2 boards.  Now that things are hooked up to the new board, we decided to go forth with a simple programming challenge.

The Challenge

Our first programming challenge is for each of us to program the robot to move foward towards a wall and try to stop the closest to the wall without knocking over the blocks used to create it.

The first Library Basics blog covered a basic conversion from a working sketch to a very simple library using the C++ class.  User mogul correctly pointed out some code optimizations that we can make.  His original message was:

You seem to waste a little resources here and there:

You store 4 private variables.

Introduction

When I'm coding, depending on the programming language, I usually like to sprinkle debugging statements into my code to see data, code decisions and general information while the program is executing.  Using the Arduino, I can use the Serial library to stream print statements to the Serial Monitor for example.

Option 1: In code #if

The first option is very simple.  At the top of your source file, you put in the following line when you want to turn debugging code on:

#define DEBUG

Introduction

 With all the questions surrounding libraries in the Arduino IDE, I thought I'd start my next blog about creating a class used as a library for my Ping sensor.  As a start, I'll use the example sketch from the Arduino examples.  Below is the example code created by David Mellis and Tom Igoe with the majority of the comments removed:

Original (uncommented) Sketch

Well, I don't know what happened.  I rewired up the Robot to get that snarl of wires out of the way and now the motors don't work with the motor shield and the servo used with the Ping sensor jitters.

Here are things I've tried:

I've tried rewiring the motors to the breadboard a few different ways to no avail because I thought it was the poor soldering job I did on the wires and the wires I made were not seated in the breadboard properly.  I made new solid core wires with no effect.

If I put power and ground from the breadboard to the motors, they work fine.

Introduction

Ever since we purchased our Arduino and tinkered around with a few simple electronics projects, we been itching to make a real robot.  Well the time has come where we had a few extra dollars to spend and we splurged and purchased the following to help us along:

Introduction

Well after some sleep we got back to work on what we thought we could accomplish without getting a headache.

Afternoon

Screw Shield