Pololu Orangutan - New Shiny

A while back, I bought a Gumstix with the hope that I'd interface it to an RC car. I wanted to see if I could make a pseudo-autonomous car that would zoom around the yard and I'd monitor/control it via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. After spending a few hundred dollars on various pieces, parts, and expansion boards, I had a pretty cool setup. The Gumstix motherboard runs Linux, has great community support. But it was overkill for my hobby needs. I got frustrated with attempting to interface it with a simple PWM motor controller. No progress == boredom, so Mr Gumstix was soon put on a shelf.

On a recent break from work, I pulled out the Gumstix and wanted to try again. My motor controller kit came from Pololu so I went back to their website to try and remember where I was. And there I saw the next shiny thing that I must own. A shiny new LV-168 Orangutan Robot Controller.



So ... Out came more dollars and the Gumstix has gone back to the shelf. The description of the Orangutan is great, seems to have what I need:

(from Pololu's website)
The Orangutan robot controller is a complete control solution for small robots. It includes an 8-character x 2-line liquid crystal display, two bi-directional motor ports, a buzzer, three pushbuttons, and up to 12 user I/O lines, yet the compact module measures only 2.00" x 1.85" and weighs less than 1 ounce. Because of the complete feature set, very few additional components (such as sensors or motors) need to be added to complete the electronic portion of a small robot. The small package allows for greater flexibility in incorporating the electronics into the mechanical design of a robot.

The Orangutan is based on Atmel’s ATmega168 microcontroller, which features 16 Kbytes of flash program memory, 1024 bytes of SRAM, and 512 bytes of EEPROM. Up to 8 channels of 10-bit analog-to-digital conversion are also available. Because the user has direct access to the microcontroller, any development software for Atmel’s AVR microcontrollers, including Atmel’s free AVR Studio and the WinAVR GCC C/C++ compiler, is compatible with the Orangutan. An in-circuit programmer, such as our Orangutan USB programmer, is required for programming the Orangutan.

The Orangutan input voltage is 5-10 V, making it well-suited for use with small DC motors and 5- to 8-cell NiCd or NiMH battery packs. The motor driver can supply up to a maximum of 1 A per motor channel, subject to power dissipation requirements. Total power consumption (with motors and buzzer off) is under 15 mA.

Sounds great, what can I lose by trying it out? Um, $50.

I ordered on Friday night after midnight. I couldn't just order the controller, I needed the USB programmer also. The combo meal deal is what I needed. After shipping, it was $84.90.

I live in a small town, mail is sometimes slow so I was amazed when my package arrived Tuesday, 2 business days after ordering. Very nice.

Unpacked around 7pm and by 10pm, I had both RC motors hooked up and under programmatic control. By 11pm, I had a Pololu Sonar Range Finder (left over from the Gumstix days) working. Not a bad night's work. Much more to do but for now, the car drives down the hall until it sees a wall and then randomly turn right or left. It soon gets hung up on a corner, spins its wheels, and wildly turns the front wheels like a spastic creature. This is fun stuff.

The code is written in C with Orangutan-lib and AVRDUDE to program the Atmel ATmega168 microcontroller. Really, no learning curve, this has been dirt simple. The resource page on Pololu's LV-168 page has been great as well as their support forums.

Kits

I'm looking for something to help get my youngest interested in making/engineering. He's a young geek, reads lots of books, watches MythBusters, SmashLabs and such. I want to find a something to pique his interest in building stuff.

In this month's Robot magazine, he saw a two-page ad for Tamiya robocraft kits. He's really been pushing for me to spring for the racehorse. It looks kinda cheap and I hate to waste the money. It's only $14 so I guess it won't drive me all the way to the poor house but I hate buying crap. I can finds lots of places selling these kits but haven't seen a review.

When he's a few years older, I hope he's interested in building stuff like the nerdkit. When I was a kid, my dad occasionally would build things from HeathKit. He made a heath kit oscilloscope around 1973 that was still working great at least 20 years later. I loved watching him make circuit boards, fix broken motors, etc.

For myself, I bought a gumstix kit with the dream that I'll build an Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV) that will roam my backyard. So far I've managed to spend lots of money, destroy my son's Hummer R/C, and make a very large pile of crap on the garage bench. And I've enjoyed every minute of it.