I'd have to agree with the gentleman from Alabama. I have seen messages
from places both 4000 miles away and two hours away from me. There is
too much diversity for a consenus, and I don't really see the need for
it. What brought me here was the single idea -- a lawn mowing robot.
That's really all the agreement you need.
I suggest the list should serve two purposes. The first being a forum
for ideas. It should be a place to teach and to learn. The second
purpose would be to organize into *small* teams to implement one or more
aspects of a robotic mower.
We have multi-taleneted participants and a "multimedia" environment in
which to communicate. For example, as Dave finishes his ground sensing
experiments he might consider posting the results to the web page.
Things like data, graphs, schematics, etc. that would allow others to
benefit or even expand upon his work. If you don't want a ultrasound
sensor on *your* robot, don't have one. However, the information does
apply to our one common goal -- to build a MowBot.
Monta Elkins wrote:
> While we each are certainly free to design and build
> our own systems; I was hoping there would be some commonality
> such that we could share resources and talents.
>
> I write (wrote?) a lot of 68HC11 assembly code;
> that might not be someone else's 'cup of tea'.
Organizing into this type of team is the other major uses of the server.
Especially, if the members are on two sides of the globe. I intend to
construct my robot in a module like fashion, and I could join various
teams depending on what systems the robot needed next. Ideally, there
would be multiple teams working on various pieces of a robot in a
cyclical fashion, refining the design, and communicating the information
back to the group as a whole.
Enough of this! I have a Mowbot to build.
Robert