Re: OT: Programming Robots

On 30/11/2007, Thomas H. George <lists@tomgeorge.info> wrote:
> My college student grandson says he wants to study programming robots.
> Aside from all the commercial (game?) kits are there serious Linux
> applications that he should consider? If so, how best to get started?
>
> Tom

For me part of the solution is to learn a programming language that can do bitwise operations is a great start, C and pascal can communicate directly to hardware fairly easily. Learning to program to an old style parallel port can be useful, there are a ton of things you can do with a parallel port. Very simply you can have 4 "address" lines using LF FF Paper-out and online and 8 bits data. Use the 8 bits data to turn things on and off and the address lines as limit switches etc. You can interface to the port using common ttl type logic gates. One IC he might like to look into is a ULN2003. In 1 IC package there are 8 high current sinking transistors with protection (for turning on and off relays etc).

He can also use an old style game port for an analogue input (for position sensing).

All in all the posibilities are endless.

He is going to have a lot of fun.

Adrian

-- 
24x7x365 != 24x7x52 Stupid or bad maths?
 hm. I've lost a machine.. literally _lost_. it responds to
ping, it works completely, I just can't figure out where in my
apartment it is.


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