Also hope to get it done in less then 2 weeks,i got one very last trip out of the country for work for 3 weeks

Yes work can get in the way of Robot making / fishing / boating / and all the other great stuff :-)

Steve_c

BUT not any more,quiting work after end of march ,retiring at 45

Guys. I was thinking why not a light house type of thing. I mean you can use what ever type of system to navigate either sound or light. Just like crude way point in a gps. You have your bot running around and it see the voltage getting low. You have an EZ-B with a battery and (for this case) a speaker in the "lighthouse" it starts to put out a sound and the bot heads to it. Once its with in a specific range like a foot, you will be able to tell from when you set it out there that it can see the home base from there. So it gets close to the "lighthouse" it shuts off the "lighthouse" and turns on the base locator speaker and the bot moves from the "lighthouse" on to the base to charge..

@Rural Geek......Thanks for participating. Yes there had been some mention of using light and/or sound to lure the robot to its charger (page 8 of this thread was one of them).

There are a lot of cool ideas floating around and there are so many things I want to try. I think we need to refresh the list of ideas again. I'm still leaning towards using some sort of IR Beacon that transmits a binary code unique for each room but, I have not found a suitable circuit yet. Well I sort of found it in the "Robot Builders Bonanza" book I had but the chips are obsolete. The thing I don't like about the idea is that each beacon would have to be powered somehow and IR L.E.D.s consume a lot of current so batteries would not last very long and walwart power packs would be out of the question if you had to mount the beacons on the ceiling.

I am planning to purchase the POLOLU IR Beacon set to experiment with as soon as I save up the $$$.

Also, has everyone taken a look at the links I posted earlier. They contain a lot of good info and ideas on robot docking techniques especially on how to dock with the contacts on the charger. Here are the links again for anyone who is interested.

Chris and Dawn Schur's web site link 1

Chris and Dawn Schur's web site link 2

Laser-Detector-Remote-Control

IR Beacon

IR Beacon User Guide

IR Beacon example

Has anyone looked at the possibility of embedding magnets in the doorway threshold of each room? Is there a way to use magnets to identify each room? Of course everyone's house is different. Mine just happens to have a wooden strip that goes across the floor in each doorway that I could embed a magnet in it or under it. Would the magnet interfere with the compass module discussed earlier?

Another idea...instead of QR codes as mentioned in an earlier post, what about a bar code reader mounted on the robot that scans a small bar code label in each doorway? Are there any bar code readers that can be hooked to the EZ-B? Are there any bar code label generator apps out on the web....I am looking into this. Then again some may not want to place little stickers in their doorways.

Guys.....the robot "knowing" what room it is in... is the whole key to getting this plan to work. I think everything else: navigation using- (wall following, compass modules, way-point beacons etc), avoiding obstacles, getting through doorways, detecting battery voltage, homing in on the charging nest, and methods of docking can be done using one or more of the various things that have been discussed. But this room ID issue is the big thing standing in our way.

I'm not going to let this thread die. I WILL pursue this until I have a working solution and I am so glad that I have friends like you all to share the journey. You guys are my therapy in a world gone mad. It is so much fun working as a team on this. And it is an honor to now claim I have friends around the world!

Hopefully soon we will hit upon an idea that will work for many, if not all of our fellow EZ-B'ers and it will give our robots the coolest thing of all....autonomous independance.

RGORDON i bought 2 already and looking to use it,and compare to one on IROBOT roomba its uses the same idea only its 360 deg

Buts the pololu design is kinda close to it,does do a true 360 deg,only N,S,E and W BUT thinking it will give the same results

IF it does i can easy design one like the roomba design at a lower cost.

IT uses a omnicone so a cheap roomba base will have some parts for it.second omnicones are great for camera to give it a 360 deg angle of the room (omnicone is like a parabolic mirror)

SAME is used in very high cost laser LIDAR and same on heathkit HERO 2000 ROBOT

Can also use a spinning mirror design as a omnicone ,like the NEATO LIDAR has

about magnets only problem is the distance ,its very short using a hall effect

NOW a metal detector may work since it can read long depths or distance and since it uses a coil ,it can detect a magnet ,but still another problem it will pick up any metals ,door knob,hinges,nails

Might be able to adjust the coil to match the gauss reading of the magnet only or make a gauss meter.

I have a gauss meter at home,i have almost any meter made to run tests,like lux meter,gauss meter,phototach meter,temperature meter and few more.

AND like you said REX room ID is the biggest problem,i am working on it and will find a idea that will work,without messing up a house

i know some dont care about putting marking on the wall (QR codes) or beacon in every room,then you keep needing to change the batteries

ROBOT's we build should not use these idea's,everything should be on the robot

I know its low cost ,but i guess its hard for others ,that dont make much money

REX magnet idea seems good can easy hide them,no battery needed

That is what i want too REX autonomous robot independance