or Freeduino to differentiate them from the original Arduino
designs. The Adafruit Boarduino (available in kit form for
under $18) is like the Arduino Nano. It uses thru-hole
components for ease of soldering.
Some variations of the Arduino depart from the
standard form-factor of the Uno, and are not designed for
use with expansion shields (discussed below). A good
example is the LilyPad — a special Arduino layout
engineered for making (among other things) wearable
microcontroller projects. Think Borg implants, only more
friendly looking. The flower-shaped LilyPad has a flat profile
and can be sewn into fabric. It has connection points on
the ends of its 22 petals.
With so many variations of the Arduino floating
around, it’s easy to get confused. For the ArdBot, we’ll be
using an Arduino Duo, but you can readily substitute just
about any of the other versions. If you already have an
earlier Duemilanove or even Diecimila, you can use it with
the ArdBot. The only catch is that you’ll need to make sure
you have an up-to-date Arduino programming environment
installed on your computer. I’ve tested everything with
version 0019 of the Arduino programming IDE (discussed
later), so with that version or anything later you should be
good to go.
Ready Expansion Via Shields
The Arduino is an example of the KISS principle. Its
simple design helps keep costs down, and makes the
Arduino a universal development board adaptable to just
about anything. While there are more expensive specialty
versions of the Arduino made for robotics applications, the
basic board lacks connectors to directly attach to motors,
sensors, or other devices.
The Arduino itself has no breadboard area, but it’s easy
enough to connect any of the inputs or outputs to a small
breadboard via wires. For an application like robotics, you’ll
want to expand the Arduino I/O headers to make it easier
to plug in things like motors, switches, and ultrasonic or
infrared sensors.
One method is to use an add-on expansion board
known as a shield. These stick directly on top of the core
board designs (Uno, Duemilanove, and Diecimila). Pins on
the underside of the shield insert directly into the Arduino’s
I/O headers. Two popular expansion shields are the
solderless breadboard and the proto shield; both provide
prototyping areas for expanding your circuit designs.
Of course, you don’t absolutely need a shield to expand
the Arduino. You can place a breadboard — solderless or
otherwise — beside the Arduino, and use ribbon cables or
hookup wire to connect the two together. This is the
approach we’ll be using with the ArdBot described in this
series of articles.
USB Connection and Power
To allow the easiest possible means of programming,
the Arduino Duo and related core boards support on-board
USB. You merely need to connect a suitable USB cable
between the Arduino and your computer. The cable even
provides the power to the board. The necessary USB drivers
are provided with the Arduino software. In most cases,
installation of the drivers is not fully automatic, but the
steps are straightforward and the Arduino support pages
provide a walk-through example.
Main Components
This is a selected list of North American sources for the
main components for the ArdBot.
Arduino Duo or Duemilanove
Source Item or SKU
Adafruit 50
HVW Tech 28920 (Freeduino SB)
RobotShop RB-Ard-03
SparkFun DEV-09950
Solderless breadboard, 170 tie-points
Source Item or SKU
Adafruit 65
HVW Tech 21380
Parallax 700-00012
RobotShop RB-Spa-139
Continuous rotation servo (Futaba spline)
Source Item or SKU
Parallax 900-00008
Pololu 1248
RobotShop RB-Gws- 23
Solarbotics 36000
SparkFun ROB-09347
2-1/2” or 2-5/8” rubber wheels
(Futaba spline)
Source
Adafruit
HVW Tech,
Solarbotics
Parallax
Pololu
RobotShop
Item or SKU
167
SW
28109
226
RB-Sbo-86
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