Disobedient Eddie

I had driven Eddie with the native Parallax dashboard program:

I have now a problem with the motor drives. Sometimes Eddie won't go forward, then it just turns and eventually stops and combination of all of them. Disobedient kid.... I hope Eddie will grow up...

Several resets and it worked OK for a while. I replicated the problem also with the Parallax monitor program.

Sensors are working OK. See the right sensors on the picture, that detected the water container
in front.

Possibly I have just lost something and then blaming Eddie...

Eddie's First Steps

Eddie is now moving by the control program. I connected  remotely from my desktop to the laptop:

There were some  problems to get Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio, Kinect camera and Parallax control board to work together. That's the way it is always. Thanks for user groups:
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/roboticstroubleshooting/thread/5f665529-ffd0-40fd-8d5e-9c66f706b3a1

This is a  good example of a software bug. This a part of our work to fix them by the help of our community.


Now I have to study more Microsoft Visual C#,  that is the main language of Eddie, I know Visual Basic .NET well. They are very near. I will use MS C# Express that is a free edition. I have designed a SQL Server database application with VB.NET. Hopefully Eddie and me will learn to collect automatically info to the database. One future plan....

Naturally I have to study Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 4 (RDS):
http://www.microsoft.com/robotics/
It is free, too! I hope that Microsoft and Parallax will support it in the future, that is my main concern.

 I used to program with Microsoft Visual Basic 5, especially interfaces to electronic devices and systems. RDS is different, like an artificial nerve system.

 In VB5 I read sensors, processed the data,and output actions to the outside world. Pretty simple then. It was a wide marine navigation and positioning system.  I hope to replicate that at light level ( I have a permission of that for evaluation) with Eddie. So there is a lot of challenge.

Eddie robot from the box

Hi there,

I have started my career with electronics design, especially microprocessors. For ten years I have been involved in geophysics and marine systems design, especially software design. In recent years I have maintained computer networks and designed databases.

The common factor has been Microsoft. The Microsoft slogan is "Be what's next". Then I found Eddie:

Opening package

http://www.parallax.com/eddie
That will be my next thing!

I ordered it and the story begins:

Starting point , see the air pump:)

Figuring out ?

Motor, gearbox and wheels installed

Upside down, when batteries installed

Electronics installation and READY!

First life signs, see lamps!

The quality of the parts was very good. This is not a toy. Actually the only problem I got muscle aches when installing multiple screws by screwdrivers.