TOP SECRET hobby robot with Parallax Basic Stamp

TOP SECRET
Robot Brains

Building a hobby robot with surplus electronics parts

EL BO is equipped with a Basic programmable microcrontroller, audio output, a chip to boost its sensor input capacity, a circuit to drive two motors in forward and reverse, and an infrared remote control system.

The Parallax Basic Stamp Microcontroller
    Here you can see the Parallax BS2 on a carrier board I built for it & also the audio amp. The BS2 is a microcrontroller with16 in/out (I/O) pins, which, for my robot, was not enough (see below.)
    The BS2 is programmable in a version of the Basic language, which is rather simple and easy to learn, but offers some pretty powerful features. In particular (for you technophiles,) it has some rather sexy bit and byte-specific variable-aliasing & handling features.
    Like I said on the concept page, robotics is all about communication, and the BS2 is the hub of this activity. It can communicate digitally to transistors & all flavors of integrated circuits (a.k.a. "ICs" a.k.a. "chips")
    It can also communicate somewhat in analog: it can output a PWM (pulse width modulation) signal which will (among other things) amount to an analog voltage output, and with the help of a capacitor and a resistor, can take analog measurements of resistance (good for sensors.)
    I decided to have EL BO communicate to the outside world via beeps instead of trying to mount a huge & expensive visual display to it. Here's how:

    PWM, mentioned above, is a bunch of single volt level pulses output over a specific time (called a duty cycle.) PWM is typically used to create a specific voltage level, which is the sum of those pulses averaged over the duty cycle.
    PWM also amounts to a nice range of frequencies, which can be made audible. These frequencies are sent to an audio amp which outputs it through a speaker.
    The amplifier I built is from the Forrest Mims Scrapbook, with some modifications (the robot has no negative power supply) and with a filter circuit straight out of the BS2 manual.
    Click here for the Parallax home page to find more info on the BS2.

   In the section above I mentioned that I maxed out my I/O pins on the BS2. The "shift register" in the picture is a very simple circuit I built to add some more. At the cost of 3 I/O pins on the BS2 you can get eight digital inputs. More flexible, sexy, and bigger solutions exist, but after some consideration I chose the shift register because it offered easy interface, a rock bottom part count (you don't need any external resistors, capacitors, oscillators, etc.,) and cost a friendly 50 cents!
    This particular shift register is officially known as a "8 bit parallel to serial shift register." This refers mostly to the communication method it uses. It turns parallel information into serial.

    Parallel is a communication method in which (for this example) eight signals travel over eight wires. They all travel at the same time. Thus, they are called "parallel." If you used both hands to signal to your best friend, you would be communicating in parallel.
    Serial is a communication method where seperate signals are sent sequentially one after the other across one wire. There are a gazillion serial communication protocols, which use timing, error correction math, clocking, signal frequencies, "hand shaking," etc. The serial communication device you are probably most familiar with is your mouth. You say a series of words one word at a time, and meaning is somewhat dependent on sequence.
    For you technophiles, the serial protocol used by this chip is synchronous "MSBPRE" (which stands for "most significant bit first pre-clock pulse mode."
    So, in the end, this chip takes information from 8 wires and uses 3 wires to hand that info to the BS2.

    So far I've covered devices the BS2 uses to talk to humans and other chips. The Mondotronics Dual H-Bridge is what the EL BO BS2 uses to talk to the motors. Motors speak the language of high amps. Amps are the measure of electricity flowing through a circuit. Too many milliamps can fry a microcontroller. Luckily, there are transistors and chips which are specifically built to withstand high amp levels.
    An H-Bridge is a circuit designed to take a small signal (go forward, go reverse) from a microconroller and turn it into something which can power a motor in the desired direction. I ended up buying a packaged H-Bridge after trying & frying three or four home built ones.
    Click here to visit the Mondotronics robot store.

    The DTMF infrared remote control receiver & decoder.
    So are you tired of reading about communication yet? Well, buckle in because here is more more more. Since the robot was going to be moving around all the time, it would be a pretty sticky proposition to have to hit keys any time you wanted it to do something else (like turn off.) Thus I figured it would be a good idea to build a remote control system for it. What looked like the most hearty, simple, and cheap method at the time was a DTMF based infrared remote.

    DTMF are the tones which come out of your phone when you dial a number. Each number has a distinct tone. The tones were designed to be pretty sturdy, distinct, and unique. It just so happens that these tones are also good for transmitting over light waves. In this case, infrared (IR) light.
    I built a seperate transmitter which generates the tones and transmits them via IR light emitting diodes (LEDs.) The board in the picture has a sensor which picks up that light, turns it into an electrical signal, which is then amplified and finally, decoded by a chip specially designed to do so.
    The chip will then tell your microprocessor what number corresponds to the tone it just heard. Just for the record the chip communicates this information in parallel.

    Summary: This is about everything that will be installed on EL BO. I have put it all together and run it a lot for testing purposes. It all works reliably. Unfortunately, as of this writing, I blew the DTMF chip (which must be real easy to do) and am currently waiting for another to arrive via UPS.

I've recently started a new website about robot vacuum cleaners in general and the iRobot Roomba in specific. You should check it out!

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All this stuff copyright, 1998 Dave Benz

	The Parallax Basic Stamp Microcontroller Here you can see the Parallax BS2 on a carrier board I built for it & also the audio amp. The BS2 is a microcrontroller with16 in/out (I/O) pins, which, for my robot, was not enough (see below.) The BS2 is programmable in a version of the Basic language, which is rather simple and easy to learn, but offers some pretty powerful features. In particular (for you technophiles,) it has some rather sexy bit and byte-specific variable-aliasing & handling features. Like I said on the concept page, robotics is all about communication, and the BS2 is the hub of this activity. It can communicate digitally to transistors & all flavors of integrated circuits (a.k.a. "ICs" a.k.a. "chips") It can also communicate somewhat in analog: it can output a PWM (pulse width modulation) signal which will (among other things) amount to an analog voltage output, and with the help of a capacitor and a resistor, can take analog measurements of resistance (good for sensors.) I decided to have EL BO communicate to the outside world via beeps instead of trying to mount a huge & expensive visual display to it. Here's how:
PWM, mentioned above, is a bunch of single volt level pulses output over a specific time (called a duty cycle.) PWM is typically used to create a specific voltage level, which is the sum of those pulses averaged over the duty cycle. PWM also amounts to a nice range of frequencies, which can be made audible. These frequencies are sent to an audio amp which outputs it through a speaker. The amplifier I built is from the Forrest Mims Scrapbook, with some modifications (the robot has no negative power supply) and with a filter circuit straight out of the BS2 manual. Click here for the Parallax home page to find more info on the BS2.
	In the section above I mentioned that I maxed out my I/O pins on the BS2. The "shift register" in the picture is a very simple circuit I built to add some more. At the cost of 3 I/O pins on the BS2 you can get eight digital inputs. More flexible, sexy, and bigger solutions exist, but after some consideration I chose the shift register because it offered easy interface, a rock bottom part count (you don't need any external resistors, capacitors, oscillators, etc.,) and cost a friendly 50 cents! This particular shift register is officially known as a "8 bit parallel to serial shift register." This refers mostly to the communication method it uses. It turns parallel information into serial.
Parallel is a communication method in which (for this example) eight signals travel over eight wires. They all travel at the same time. Thus, they are called "parallel." If you used both hands to signal to your best friend, you would be communicating in parallel. Serial is a communication method where seperate signals are sent sequentially one after the other across one wire. There are a gazillion serial communication protocols, which use timing, error correction math, clocking, signal frequencies, "hand shaking," etc. The serial communication device you are probably most familiar with is your mouth. You say a series of words one word at a time, and meaning is somewhat dependent on sequence. For you technophiles, the serial protocol used by this chip is synchronous "MSBPRE" (which stands for "most significant bit first pre-clock pulse mode." So, in the end, this chip takes information from 8 wires and uses 3 wires to hand that info to the BS2.
So far I've covered devices the BS2 uses to talk to humans and other chips. The Mondotronics Dual H-Bridge is what the EL BO BS2 uses to talk to the motors. Motors speak the language of high amps. Amps are the measure of electricity flowing through a circuit. Too many milliamps can fry a microcontroller. Luckily, there are transistors and chips which are specifically built to withstand high amp levels. An H-Bridge is a circuit designed to take a small signal (go forward, go reverse) from a microconroller and turn it into something which can power a motor in the desired direction. I ended up buying a packaged H-Bridge after trying & frying three or four home built ones. Click here to visit the Mondotronics robot store.
	The DTMF infrared remote control receiver & decoder. So are you tired of reading about communication yet? Well, buckle in because here is more more more. Since the robot was going to be moving around all the time, it would be a pretty sticky proposition to have to hit keys any time you wanted it to do something else (like turn off.) Thus I figured it would be a good idea to build a remote control system for it. What looked like the most hearty, simple, and cheap method at the time was a DTMF based infrared remote.
DTMF are the tones which come out of your phone when you dial a number. Each number has a distinct tone. The tones were designed to be pretty sturdy, distinct, and unique. It just so happens that these tones are also good for transmitting over light waves. In this case, infrared (IR) light. I built a seperate transmitter which generates the tones and transmits them via IR light emitting diodes (LEDs.) The board in the picture has a sensor which picks up that light, turns it into an electrical signal, which is then amplified and finally, decoded by a chip specially designed to do so. The chip will then tell your microprocessor what number corresponds to the tone it just heard. Just for the record the chip communicates this information in parallel.
Summary: This is about everything that will be installed on EL BO. I have put it all together and run it a lot for testing purposes. It all works reliably. Unfortunately, as of this writing, I blew the DTMF chip (which must be real easy to do) and am currently waiting for another to arrive via UPS.
I've recently started a new website about robot vacuum cleaners in general and the iRobot Roomba in specific. You should check it out!