[ale] semi [OT] running a robot with linux

[Ron Frazier]

Geoffrey,

I know what you mean.  An iphone would be an intriguing device.  The
problem I have with that is that Apple locks down everything you can do
with it and even the development tools you can use.  They even sued a
company recently for making an after market ssd drive that was better
than Apple's for the Mac.  They're the total opposite of open source.
Other than that, the iphone or itouch are cool devices.  Now, if you
were to jailbreak it ... but then they'd probably sue you.

I don't understand the dichotomy that exists in the controller world.
As you and I alluded to, an iphone or similar device has a nice screen,
nice touch interface, relatively powerful general purpose cpu,
relatively lots of storage, camera, microphone, speakers, usb, wireless
networking, cellular networking, etc.

A microcontroller generally is a much less powerful cpu, with much less
storage, no screen, no built in user interface, and almost none of the
features listed above.  The microcontroller makers are now raving on
about how their chips have usb (at 12Mbps I might add) and ethernet (at
10Mbps) interfaces!  That train left the station 10 years ago.  That
doesn't impress me.

These two separate worlds seem to never meet, but I think they should be
married.  I was seriously considering building a touch screen home
automation device.  I wanted to have a small screen in each room, so you
could monitor the front door, check the heating and air, check the
weather, pipe video from room to room, etc.  I was looking at using a 32
bit PIC chip.  Then, I have to add a screen, a touch panel, ethernet,
usb, storage, wifi, audio in/out, etc. etc.  I was looking at $500 each
for the cost of parts (although not in wholesale quantity).  I'm
thinking I'd do better taking a 7" android tablet from China and
modifying or augmenting that.

What the controller chips do have on their side is what we used to call
in the flight simulator world, linkage.  They have digital I/O, analog
I/O, pulse width modulation, timers, interrupts, controller area
networks, etc.  They are very good at controlling things, as you might
expect.  They are not very good at interfacing with users, general
purpose computing, storing data, and networking.

I think it's time for a shotgun wedding!

Sincerely,

Ron

On Fri, 2011-01-21 at 12:41 -0500, Geoffrey Myers wrote:
> Ron Frazier wrote:
> > One of my interests, other than Linux, is robotics (actual moving
> > machines, not computer bots).  I sometimes visit the Atlanta Hobby Robot
> > Club ( http://botlanta.org/ ).  My ultimate goal is to build a moving
> > robot which is run with a Linux based platform for a brain, and probably
> > programmed in C++, which I'm starting to learn.  I think it would be
> > really cool to run a robot using an Android phone or tablet, or possibly
> > one of those little embedded computers.  However, I think the embedded
> > computer market is behind because a phone or tablet has much more
> > computer power, memory, built in screen, wireless, network interface,
> > usb, etc.  I specifically want to use C++, rather than C, where
> > functions exist to do a task in both languages.  Lots of embedded
> > computers can be programmed in C, but not C++.  I also want the robot to
> > be able to do more complex tasks than just following a line, etc.
> > That's why I'm leaning toward a more sophisticated controller.  I'd
> > appreciate any pointers toward resources for this type of project.
> 
> I've got an old 1st generation iphone I'd like to use for such a 
> purpose.  Think about it, it's got a microphone, speakers, camera. 
> Everything you need.
> 
> > 
> > Sincerely,
> > 
> > Ron
> > 
> 
> 

-- 

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Ron Frazier

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