Palm Pilot Robot Kit

Pizon writes: "Ever wonder what else you can do with your Palm? Well, here is a good start. This clever little monkey used the 3Com Palm Pilot to build a fully autonomous robot out of standard, readily available parts (glue, tape, and a small amount of soldering). The robot can then drive itself around on flat surfaces, using optical range sensors to sense nearby obstacles and walls." Proof that not everything requires scads of hardware or the latest processor -- sometimes small is beautiful.

Enough to drive a Hardware guy MAAAAD!

This is stupid. Talk about overkill.

How much processing power do you need to process a few sensors and drive a couple wheels? $200 bucks worth of palm? Uhh... how about $4 bucks worth of microcontroller like a nice 16C64 from PIC Microship microcontroller [microchip.com]? Enough to make a hardware guy cry! Onboard RAM, ROM, EEPROM.... mmmmm..... timers and interrupt vectors.... 20mA drive current.... whoo-hooo! Just need a few H-Bridges and a couple infrared leds and detectors. You wanted to know what to do with those old 5 1/4" drives... its time to get out those irons and solder suckers!

I suppose this kit is nice for those software types that don't like to touch hardware, but what fun is that?

If you REAALY dont want to challenge yourself, and don't want to touch hardware, I would think a nice Lego mindstorms kit would be better suited and more flexable. Reconfigurable, and you can always buy more motors and sensors.

A freaking GUI for a robot? And thats a selling feature? Who needs a GUI anyways ;-)

I don't get it...

Are these guy's going for the MOST COSTLY robot to build with a Palm?

From my calcs, this thing would cost over $250 - over the cost of a Palm!

Heck, the wheels and servos alone cost over $100!

Now, since this was all about a Palm robot, we can just say this is one part that is needed, and has other uses besides the robot, so let's not really factor it in...

So how to make a cheaper robot? Start by dropping the holonomic drive! A simple two wheel approach will work fine, and will also save you on a servo. That alone will drop your cost by over $60 (not $75, because you make up the $10-$15 by using two normal R/C aircraft landing gear wheels bolted onto the servos). Save another $6.00 on the acrylic by taping the parts to a few FREE AOL CD's (as well as possibly creating a winning entry in the previously posted UltimateChaos contest!). Save around $30 by hooking up some matched IR LED/Transistor pairs instead of the sensors (you may have to calibrate this yourself - plus you might need a few more parts - but not much more - get one of those sensor interface Forrest Mims books at RatShack while yer at it). You'll also save close to $14.00 if you already have the glue, tape, and heat shrink tubing available (any geek worth his salt BETTER have these things handy). Finally, save the $32.00 for the battery, and spend only about $10.00 of it for a used ni-cad pack for a cell phone at your neighborhood electronics junk yard (provided you live in a place that has one or two).

So, what do we have? I just told you how to save over $150 by a) dropping the holonomic drive, which only has value as being "the" thing to do in robotics today (seems like a fashion show!) b) using cheaper parts and stuff around you. Now, I say use that serial port thing, 'cause you probably couldn't do better on your own for less, and it is cheap and easy enough to use. However, know that they way they want you to build a table-top robot is a damn expensive way to go.

Oh, almost forgot - since the cheaper way to do it involves the tank-drive approach, and this is a table-top robot, you don't need casters. If you want (or need) something to rest the fore/aft portions of the robot on, use a couple felt pads.

I support the EFF [eff.org] - do you?

Heel, Palm!

I need a "Follow Me" program so my Palm won't lose me...

personal life

"Ever wonder what else you can do with your Palm? "

I really don't want to know about your personal life.

And robots too... man that's just getting weird.

So ummmm....

does this mean 3Com is going to revive the name 'USRobotics'?

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Use of PalmOS

I don't think I agree with the choice to use PalmOS as the operating system of choice to guide a robot. You're going to want as much low-end control as possible considering the small processor, so wiping the memory and writing from assembly would've been my plan.

Of course, some of the memory can't be "erased" because of the way 3Com writes basic apps into a small PROM section. Why games like Hardball needed to be written to PROM was always beyond me...

Emulator?

Now, I'm not very mechanically inclined, so I don't think I'd ever build one of these, but I'd like to play too. Who wants to write a program that listens on the serial port and draws a simulated robot in a simulated "room"? The program would send the Palm "feedback" as the "robot" moved about the "room." It would be fun to be able to move obstacles around this virtual environment as well.

Aside from being fun for the mechanicaly inept, it might be a nifty testing ground for the robot software.

It would definitely be a good way to drain your Palm batteries.

Re:Use of PalmOS

So, RFC 1925, paragraph 7a rears its head again:

Good, Fast, Cheap: Pick any two (you can't have all three).

They picked PalmOS because it was fast (zero development time) and cheap (hey, they'd already paid for it). You're suggesting making your own OS, because it would be more good, but developing it would take time, meaning that developing this would be less fast.

Palm VII

Quick! Someone slap a Palm VII with a Palm camera on this thing!

Walmart Employee: "Security to hardware. We have a code 4427. I repeat, we have a small robot loose in the store."

All while geeks watch the live webcast from the bot.

Re:personal life

Yeah. Next thing you know, they'll be soldering their Palm into one of these [realdoll.com].