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Welcome, Clyde, to the list. I hope that you find the discussions as
informative and helpful as I have.
My design
My design is a radio controlled lawn mower. I will have to baby sit it,
until I implement a self-guiding system. For that system, what about using
radio beacons, an on-board computer to triangulate the position relative to
the yard, and a map in memory to plot a path. I'm thinking that I could put
a beacon on a tree near the front yard, and one in the back yard - then
design a microprocessor to "learn" a path, and repeat the same path with the
push of a button. The microprocessor could also handle the safety and
sensing overrides.
This way, I will start the "learn" program, and guide the bot with my
hand-held transmitter, mowing the entire yard. The microprocessor could
take a piece of data every 5 seconds or so, storing information on:
1. position (relative to the radio beacons)
2. speed
Then, 2 weeks later, I put the bot out on the driveway, start the engine and
push the "Go" button. It will maneuver itself to the same location where we
started 2 weeks earlier, then step through the data points, one every 5
seconds, all while sensing for bump obstacles, tip overs, or people or
animals within 3 feet or so of the bot.
In this way, I could program several different cutting paths (depending on
the amount of memory available) and not produce stripes or ruts in my yard
from cutting the same path every time.
On another subject
Does anyone know of a company that was in business back in the '70's in
Irving, Texas, USA called Normark? My father in law gave me a kit that they
sold to retrofit an older car to have power windows. the kit consists of
motors, flexible steel cables with the square-cross-section-drive-cable, and
worm gear window-crank-handle turners. I will put some pictures of the
equipment on my website http://members.xoom.com/twotires/Michael.htm in a
couple days. I've been trying to track them down with no luck. I've got
one kit (2 motors, 2 cables, 2 drives, switches, etc.), but I'd like some
more (I'm using these to drive the rear wheels, but I still need something
to drive the fronts.) Any info would be greatly appreciated.
My platform is almost complete. I'm using a donated Lowe's 22" mower which
I've modified so the front wheels can be steered. I also struggled and
finally got the encoder / decoder circuitry I found on Harry Lythall's
website working, but I've given up the struggle to build the radio link - I
want to get this thing going this year. That circuit works pretty neat and
would provide proportional control of 9 servos (yes, a 9 channel R/C link) -
I just bought a 2 channel Futaba for $92.00 and went on with the platform.
Michael Davenport
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