One more thing, you wont walk into a Radio Shack anymore. They shut down. Also, I hardly consider Radio Shack the authority on electronics. That is just laughable. Walk into a Brookstone and see what they carry. Also, just because something is carried by a company that was hemorrhaging money out of its jugular doesn't make it the best.

Sure, arduino's are popular and I use them for subsystems. They are good at that. They are not good as an advanced robot controller. A Pi is much better at that and it is still very weak.

okay, now I am done.

@Designatures Perhaps you overlooked the letters "E" and "Z" in the name of the site. It stands for easy. The whole point of the EZ Robots company is to provide tools for the non-programmer to use such that he/she can get their robot to do things without having to learn programming or advanced hardware/electronics concepts. Are there people here who want to go farther than that? You bet. I'm one of them. I love making what I have available do things it was never meant to do. But that's me.

Of course, I can't speak for the company per se, but to me, that's not their focus. The main purpose of this forum is to help the user with little to no experience with robots or programming to be able to use the robots they sell. The fact they also help advanced users is a bonus. Faulting the company or the users here for not going into great detail about programming or details about the hardware is to miss the point of the whole enterprise.

Learning about robots is not all about programming or even how the hardware and electronics works in detail. Do you need to know all the details of how the electronic components work on an Arduino work to be able to use it effectively? No. I'll bet the vast majority of the folks who use them are like that. Same with these robots. You can learn a lot about robotics in general and never know much of anything about programming or electronics or mechanics. Most likely many who start out that way will want to go farther, but it is not necessary to enjoy the robots themselves.

Quote:

never the less what was mentioned was that NO one in here will help the kid because he does not have a ex board ...

Hi ahasan_ratul,

Yes you can interface ARC with other boards and components and post questions about your explorations here. None of those C# suggestions are necessary. I hope you'll continue to post you AWESOME tutorial and experience also.

ARC is a robotic operating system that DJ Sures has spent a lot of time developing things under the hood to do exactly what you're asking for help with.

Personally, I can't wait to see give your robot an independent vestibuler system and cerebellum. The mega and IMU 6050 boards can be attached directly to the servos for nearly real-time feedback and self-regulation.

Here's an excellent example of a man who used the serial communications to read ping sensors from a Arduino Nano. Reading your MPU data is no different. DJ's responded to this man's post as, "Brilliant!".

I'll be checking back here hourly to watch your progress...

synthiam.com/Community/Questions/6491&page=2

Let me know if you need help with mega code to read from the IMU?

Thanks again for your contributions,

Bill

Designatures, if you're looking for answers ask questions and sort through what people offer you. If you're looking for drama have kids or go into politics.

For the oldest members, I think we have our new @robotmaker (sorry for the private joke)

All of the darpa robots were tethered including the ones that won.

There is a difference in what you are talking about as untethered vs tethered and what tethered vs untethered is. An onboard computer makes the robot tethered. The arduino is simply a device that is good for controlling devices, but not as the brain of the computer. Edison does this. It is a computer on a chip, and is the arduino it is driving is controlling the devices. it is tethered, just running locally on the robot. The same can be done with the EZ-B. An onboard computer can be used.

Again, you can use an EZ-B with IoT, or with linux, or with anything now that UniversalBot is available which shows the serial commands needed to control this controller. I think this is pretty cool. It allows me to scale my computer to be the required speed to perform the functions necessary. My robots use onboard computers, but that is completely a design decision. it would be just as easy to do this without onboard computers. Edison is a computer... on a chip. You could control the EZB or up to 255 EZB's from this or other computers.

Believe me, I understand franchises well. I also know what happens to them when the underlying support for such stores goes under. It wont be long and you will need to look for your new authority on electronics.

It is really hard to understand what you are saying. Your lack of punctuation and using proper case makes your ideas and thoughts hard to follow. I would love to have an intelligent conversation but this makes it very difficult at best to do.

Why would you jump into a community dedicated to using a specific product and then go about trying to bash that product? I personally believe you are missing out on a lot of what is available to you to allow you to build amazing robots but that is just my opinion.

I would love to get a list from you of robots that you don't think are tethered and are doing amazing things. I think when you dig into it, you will find that they are tethered.

In all reality, you are missing the point entirely. You have the option to do what you want to do with this platform. It is totally up to you how in depth you want to get with this platform. If you want to use the tools that are built for you, great. If you want to code your own, great. This allows a lot of people to be able to use this REAL platform. the other ones simply don't offer any availability for some people to use them. I would say that the REAL platform is the one that allows the user to choose how in depth they want to get with programming, but your definition may be different. I bet your using a GUI for your computer right now. I guess that means that the computer that you are using is not real. I guess your cell phone is not real either. All of those pesky apps in the way of you writing your own cell phone OS or computer OS. Your car, do you have fuel injection or do you still use that amazing carb? What about the brakes, still using Drum brakes? The point that I am making is that robotics will follow the same path of the computer. The systems will become more user friendly so that more users will be able to do more with them. Without this step computers would not have made it into homes as they have. Your arguments are the same ones that I heard about windows when it first came out. Robotics is in the same stage as computers were in about 1993-4. Unless you lived it, you probably don't understand it. User friendly will drive this technology forward. Without it, it will stay where it is with very few people accepting or adopting it.

BTW, NASA uses these along with a lot of other companies that you would never realized uses them.

Great, I look forward to seeing the robot. What you have described is a tethered robot. The last step didnt require untethered by the way. It required a weakened wifi signal. Now, that doesn't mean that the robots didn't function untethered, only that there was a weakened signal and the teams had to account for that.

Your bot is a tethered robot. The arduinos are being used as subsystems for specific devices. I do the same. I also use OpenCV. Its a great platform. BTW, I believe that EZ-Robot also uses openCV but I might be wrong. Your PC is onboard your robot. That doesn't make it an untethered robot. Just because there are no wires to the robot doesnt make it untethered. Your controlling the subsystems via a wire. The subsystems are arduinos. You are tethered to the arduino. How is this different than doing the same via wifi, only Wifi has no wires. There are some latency issues with wifi which makes the serial connection more favorable in some aspects when using an onboard computer. It is still tethered.

Your robot and AI sound really impressive. I am doing something similar with my current project. I am leveraging some things that are already developed but pretty similar. My robot also has the capability of running with no computer connection from outside the robot. There is one thing that I think you are short sighted on though and if you would like me to pass along some information or ideas on how to improve your design, feel free to shoot me an email. My email address is in my profile. Its up to you, but I also am here to help.

Not yours, the darpa project. Sorry I wasn't clear.

What is the difference between the computer being inside the robot or outside? No wire means that the robot isn't tethered? So the ezb isn't tethered then?

They are both tethered. Just because it is inside the robot or outside it matters not.

Yes, your brain is tethered to the rest of your body via the nervous system and vascular system.