We wish you all a very happy holidays filled with love, joy and robots…lots of robots.
If you need a last minute robotic gift for someone, you can quickly put together this holiday paper-craft robot below. You could also go crazy and add some LEDs in order to make it even more robotic.
This papercraft model comes from Toyshop Greetings.
Today is a great day in the history of GoRobotics.net. On this 10 year anniversary, RobotShop has taken on the mission of continuing the legacy or Mr. William Cox, the founding father of GoRobotics.net, by maintaining and further expanding this community by continuing to post interesting robotics projects, news and by sharing our experience for everyone to enjoy.
Just like William, we at RobotShop are truly passionate about robots and happy to be part of a community that is equally enthusiastic and interested in everything robotic. We are happy to join GoRobotics.net, and to tackle the challenge of bringing you (yes, you) the latest and greatest developments in this rapidly expanding field.
Besides reporting on cool robotic projects selectively chosen from around the internet, we will initially publish the How to Make a Robot, Grand Tutorial Series. These are going to be a series of detailed tutorials on how to get started with robotics by guiding you through the process of making a simple, general purpose mobile robot. It’s our way of thanking you for your sustained interest and enthusiasm.
We are thrilled about this new opportunity to reach out to the GoRobotics community. As always, please leave a message with your thoughts/concerns/questions as we are eager to hear back from you.
Long live GoRobotics.net!
Update: The contest is now closed. I’ll be gathering the entires and sending them to our judges over the next week or two. Stay tuned for a post announcing the winners. If you won I will also contact you via email. Thanks and good luck!
The past few months have been a lot of fun, with us giving away nearly $750 dollars of awesome robot prizes. But, we’re not done yet! April is the official 10 year anniversary of GoRobotics.net and we’ve saved the best prizes for last! This month we’ll be giving away over $1,000 dollars of prizes from our sponsors Pololu, Zagros Robotics, Solarbotics , Vex Robotics, Apress, and No Starch Press. Our sponsors have been incredibly generous and we hope to be able to offer more contests in the future.
The final robot giveaway is going to be a little tougher to enter than previous contests. This is only fair because we’ve got some awesome prizes and we have confidence that you, our faithful readers, will rise to the challenge. To enter this month’s contest, post a link in the comments to a project that you’ve built. It can be a link to your own website, a forum, or something similar, but we suggest adding your project to RobotBox and posting a link to that (shameless promotion, natch!). One entry per person, so pick your best project.
Here’s how the prizes will be awarded:
1. First prize goes to our favorite project. Favorite will be voted on by a panel of folks TBA.
2. Second prize goes to the second place favorite.
3. Third prize goes to a randomly selected project – this means there’s no excuse for you not to submit your project no matter how “good” you think it is!
The contest ends April 30th, at 12AM EST. Comments are moderated to prevent spam. Your comment won’t show up till the moderator has approved it.
It’s that time again! Time for the March celebration of GoRobotics’ 10th Birthday. We’re once again giving away fabulous robot prizes to 3 lucky winners. Previous contests have been great, and we’re excited to be doing it again with prizes from our sponsors Pololu, Super Droid Robots, Zagros Robotics, Solarbotics and No Starch Press.
There are four ways of entering this month’s contest:
1. Simply comment on this post and tell us your favorite robot websites.
2. Follow GoRobotics on Twitter and leave a comment below telling us your Twitter username.
3. Follow RobotBox on Twitter and leave a comment below telling us your Twitter username.
4. Retweet the following, “Enter @GoRobotics.net’s 10 Year Birthday Robot Giveaway http://wp.me/pgDpL-kM“. Leave a comment when you do.
YOU CAN DO ALL FOUR (four comments) TO INCREASE YOUR CHANCES OF WINNING!
Winners will be chosen at random. Three winners will be chosen and the first winners will get his/her choice of the prizes, second place gets second choice and third place gets whatever is left over! The contest ends MARCH 31st, 2010 at 12AM EST. Comments are moderated to prevent spam. Your comment won’t show up till the moderator has approved it. Here are this month’s prizes:
1st Place Prize – Orangutan B-328 Robot Controller (donated by Pololu), 2x 24V 195 RPM Gear Motors (donated by Super Droid Robots), and The LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT Idea Book (donated by No Starch Press) – worth $100
The Baby Orangutan B-328 robot controller from Pololu is the perfect choice for a brain for your robot. Its 24 pin compact form allows it to fit into very small robots without sacrificing its powerful AVR microcontroller and 2 channel motor drivers. Yep, that’s right – this little guy is both a controller and a motor driver! All you need to add is sensors and some motors. It has an ATMega328P processor, an onboard potentiometer and LED, and 32Â KB flash, 2Â KB RAM, and 1Â KB EEPROM. The motor driver can handle up to 1A continuos per channel, 3A peak.
These powerful 24V motors donated by Super Droid Robots will kick-start your next robot project. They are high-quality motors with steel gears (not cheap plastic), and used in Super Droid’s All-terrain robots. They use a 1:27 gear reduction and have an amazing 12 kgf-cm of torque. That means they could lift a 26 lb (12 kg) load using a 1 cm lever arm! They are rated for < 250 mA of drive current. Note: These motors are probably  bit too big to be driven directly from the Baby Orangutan B-328P. Try the Dual MC33926 Motor Driver Carrier
The LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT Idea Book features chapters on programming and design, CAD-style drawings, and abundance of screenshots make it easy for the reader to master the LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT kit and to build and program nine example robots. Chapters cover using the NXT programming language (NXT-G) as well as troubleshooting; design; software; sensors; Bluetooth; even how to create a NXT remote control.
2nd Place Prize – Arduino Duemilanove, Tamiya Gear Box and Sport Tires (donated by Zagros Robotics), and The Unofficial LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT Inventor’s Guide (donated by No Starch Press)Â - worth $75
The Arduino Duemilanove is a powerful and simple robot controller built around the AtMega328P microcontroller. It comes with a bootloader already on the device so you can easily write and download programs using only a USB cable. It has many digital and analog IO lines to make connecting it to your project easy.
The Tamiya double gearbox is perfect for use in amateur robot contests, this gearbox is suitable for use with remote controlled robots. Choice of 4 gear ratios, offers emphasis on speed or power to suit your needs. Left/right independent design means you can set different gear ratios for either side. Coupled with the Sport Tire set, you’ll have a great robot propulsion system to hook up to your Duemilanove.
The LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT set is a very powerful robotics toolkit, but it lacks a detailed user’s guide. This is the user’s guide that every MINDSTORMS owner needs. The Unofficial LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT Inventor’s Guide begins by introducing the NXT set and directing the reader through setup. Following this is an in-depth discussion of the set’s electronic elements and other LEGO pieces as well as building techniques. Next, it covers the NXT-G programming environment and introduces several unofficial programming languages, providing examples of code and programming insights along the way. Finally, it presents a method for designing NXT robots in addition to a series of projects with building and programming instructions for creating complete robots.
3rd Place Prize – Herbie the Mousebot Kit (donated by Solarbotics), and LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT Thinking Robots (donated by No Starch Press) – worth $75
The Herbie the Mousebot Kit from Solarbotics is a great way to introduce ourself or a child to robotics. The kit is a 9-volt battery-powered light-following robot that loves to chase flash light beams. These little robots are so quick, you have to run to keep up to them! We’ve even enhanced Herbiewith functional whisker and tail sensors, so he doesn’t get stuck in corners or under obstacles while chasing around. It doesn’t require a microcontroller or any programming and the kit comes with all the parts and documentation to get started.
LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT Thinking Robots includes full building and programming instructions for two of Daniele Benedettelli’s most unique creations—a brand new version of his famous Rubik’s Cube solver and an interactive Tic-Tac-Toe playing robot.
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It’s time once again to give away some cool robot prizes to celebrate the 10th birthday of GoRobotics! If you didn’t win last month’s contest, have no fear, try again this month (and the month after!). We have some great robot prizes from our sponsors, SuperDroid Robots, Apress, and Pololu.
There are three ways of entering this month’s contest:
1. Simply comment on this post and tell us why you should win.
2. Follow GoRobotics on Twitter and leave a comment below telling us your Twitter username.
3. Retweet the following, “Enter @GoRobotics.net’s 10 Year Birthday Robot Giveaway http://wp.me/pgDpL-kM“. Leave a comment when you do.
YOU CAN DO ALL THREE (three comments) TO INCREASE YOUR CHANCES OF WINNING!
Winners will be chosen at random. Three winners will be chosen and the first winners will get his/her choice of the prizes, second place gets second choice and third place gets whatever is left over! The contest ends FEBRUARY 28th, 2010 at 12AM EST. Comments are moderated to prevent spam. Your comment won’t show up till the moderator has approved it. Here are this month’s prizes:
The Penguin Robot by Parallax is a unique walking robot. Using two micro servos and precisely CNC machined parts, the robot can walk via a “tilt-stride action” gait. The cute little penguin comes equipped with a digital compass to track its heading, two photoresistors for sensing ambient light and light tracking, and two infrared emitters and a detector for obstacle avoidance. The Penguin Robot comes with a 7-segment LED indicator and a piezo buzzer for making sound. This is a great kit for getting into robotics, and you should set aside about 4 hours to assemble him.
The second place prize is a whole raft of excellent books from Apress.
Build Your Own CNC Machine is the book to get you started in fabricating your own parts. CNC expert Patrick Hood-Daniel and best-selling author James Kelly team up to show you how to construct your very own CNC machine for about $500 – $1000 USD. Then they go on to show you how to use it, how to document your designs in Computer-Aided Design programs, and how to output your designs as specifications and tool paths that feed into the CNC machine, controlling it as it builds whatever parts your imagination can dream up.
Extreme NXT shows you how to advance the NXT with more than 45 exciting projects that include creating a cool magic wand that writes words in thin air, building a remotely guided vehicle, and constructing sophisticated robots that can sense color, light, temperature, and more. All projects are explained with easy-to-follow, step-by-step instructions, so you’ll be able to create them successfully whether you’re a novice or an expert. This book also shows you how to expand the programming software and use the alternative language NXC.
LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT 2.0: The King’s Treasure is written for children ages 10 and up who want to learn to design, build, and operate robots using LEGO’s immensely popular MINDSTORMS NXT 2.0 robotics kit. The book leads readers through a series of five projects centered on an engaging story line. It can be read by kids alone, or it can provide the spark for a wonderful series of parent/child activities.
These powerful 24V motors donated by Super Droid Robots will kick-start your next robot project. They are high-quality motors with steel gears (not cheap plastic), and used in Super Droid’s All-terrain robots. They use a 1:27 gear reduction and have an amazing 12 kgf-cm of torque. That means they could lift a 26 lb (12 kg) load using a 1 cm lever arm! They are rated for < 250 mA of drive current. Get started building something cool!
Update: Congratulations to our winners, Gerry Blondeaux, Dalton Caughell, and Matt Thouvenot.
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