Catching Up

Wow, I can't believe its been six weeks since I last posted here. A lot of stuff has happened, including delivering the first BrainBot* prototype to the Brain Engineering Lab, and me spending a couple weeks in bed being sick as a dog.

There are lots of things happening - new gripper being designed, new bus interface board, new generic sensor board, and a few other neat things.

Here's a picture of a prototype of the bus interface board. It has a power socket, a fuse, a power switch, the USB socket, the USB & support chips, and 6 Bioloid bus headers. This one has a few mistakes on it, including getting the D+ and D- lines mixed up on the USB socket, but with some creative trace cutting and rewiring, it works fine. The board is 1.5" x 2" in size.

This is the new sensor board I have built. It gives me 6 analog inputs, 4 digital I/O's, and 2 PWM channels (with corresponding direction pins). It is 2" square, and runs an ATmega168 running at 8 MHz. This board allows me to interface to a variety of digital and analog sensors, as well as control a couple motors.

*The BrainBot project is directed and funded by the Brain Engineering Lab and Neukom Institute