[mowbot] Archive by topic

robin nospam at acm.org
Wed, 2 Oct 1996 01:50:55 +0100

In preparation for my first Secretary's Report, I have been through
all the messages posted so far and filed their contents by topic.
It's taken much longer than I expected, but I think it's definitely
been worth it.

Although I did read all these posts when they first arrived, I have found
it enlightening to see all the discussions on one topic grouped together.
It has reminded how much people had said that I had forgotton. We do
repeat ourselves a lot! So if you think you have a good idea, I do
suggest reading the relevent topic file first to see what's already been
said in that area.

The topics pretty much evolved by themselves; as I noticed messages on
a distinct theme within a topic I went back to split the topic in to
two or more. As time goes by and new mail comes in, I will probably go
back and reorganise further, but for now, the 22 topics are:
agenda - what we should talk about
boundary - how to define and detect the limits of Mowbot's world
charging - how to get charge in to the battery
chassis - design of Mowbot's body
control - algorithms, behaviours, strategy
cost - overall budget
cutter - design of grass cutter
goals - criteria by which the design is judged
legal - how to protect the documents we produce
links - interesting web sites and books
location - design of absolute position location system
micro - choice of microcontroller
motors - design constraints and available motor information
name - other uses of ``Mowbot''; other names
neat - ideas that might not make it, but would be great!
parts - how to divide up the project
past - previous attempts at a lawnmower robot
people - biographies
power - design constraints and available battery/solar cell info
safety - requirements; how seriously to take this
sensors - various: rangefinding, grass height etc
support - resources we have available: web, list server
You can get these files from:
http://dragon.swansea.linux.org.uk/mowbot/archive-by-topic/
I haven't made yet them available by email through Majordomo, but I could
if that facility were desired.

These files contain almost everything posted to the mowbot mailing
list and a few posts that predated the list---I have only deleted mail
headers, signatures, redundant quotations and some information-free
bits (off-topic, saying hello, thanks, well done, that sort of thing).
The result is a great improvement in signal to noise! The largest topic,
goals, is still only 58K, and most topics are 8K or less.

* Action for Ray: edit the list server info file so new members are told
about the archive.

Robin.

--
Copyright (C) 1996 R.M.O'Leary <robin nospam at acm.org>  All rights reserved.
For licence to copy, see http://dragon.swansea.linux.org.uk/mowbot/