Hi there robot builders!

For years i have had the dream of building my own robot, and thanks to DJ and you this is now becoming reality. Thank you very much for this amazing product, the opportunity, and your continued effort to making robotics available to everyone!

My name is Stefan Boon, i am a student mechanical engineering at the TU-Delft in the Netherlands. Since i have basically zero budget, i have been building my robot completely from 2nd hand parts and scrap materials collected here and there. (The ez-b was quite an investment but definitely worth it)

I had ordered my complete ez-robot kit with Halloween taking advantage of the discount. But a busy and important period at college prevented me from getting started with it.

This busy period is almost over, and i am extremely exited to start implementing the ez-b in the robot-platform i built. I plan to describe my robot and ambitions for it in the project showcase section.

In short: Two ~20cm diameter wheels powered by '6V' DC motor with transmission and differential, using a 7.2 NiCd battery and (at this moment) speed/reverse control from RC-cars. Steering with one middle rear wheel mounted on servo. Body made from mainly plastic with metal and wood, containing computer-fans, a bicycle head-light and speakers. A 'spine' made from a bicycle pump on a servo. A pan/tilt 'neck' ordered with the ez-b. A head with the camera (and a microphone i guess for speech recognition?) For starters it will be controlled via desktop computer, but a dummy motherboard is built in. Total weight maybe 5 kilo's or more, but the computer in it accounts for about half of it.

I'd like to describe in more detail later, but first i have one question: Can i safely connect a 7.2V NiCd battery (as shown in attachment) to the ez-b for power? I know it shouldn't be a problem right? but i would hate to fry my brand new ez-b, so i would really rather be safe then sorry.

Thanks and kind regards Boon