brainwagon

Sorry if I’ve been a bit distracted lately: there are a number of factors which are conspiring to keep me from updating my blog as often as perhaps I would normally otherwise. One cool reason is that we started a new mail alias at work.

Well, that normally wouldn’t be news, but in this case, we decided to create an informal “Makers” list, and to get together once a week to exchange ideas, projects and even do a tiny bit of actual making. As my inaugural project, I’m taking a cheap R/C truck and retrofitting it to be an autonomous robot. With any luck, tonight I’ll be soldering together some DC motor controller kits that I got from hobbyengineering.com. My goal is to get something going as fast as possible, but ultimately I’m looking to developing something a bit more serious.

Perhaps some pictures later.

Addendum: Somewhat amazingly, despite incredibly rusty skills in electronic assembly, I managed to put together one of the motor controller kits, and it works! Next week, it will be time to get a microcontroller hooked to it. Pictures tomorrow.