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Creating the Robot
The first step of building this machine is to put together the R/C car base. When this is finished it looks like this. Next, the PC is assembled. The PC/104 module with a 64MB DiskOnChip 2000 is placed on the top of the stack. Under that is a PCMCIA Dual Slot module (Part # PCM-3115B) for the wireless PCMCIA Ethernet card. The bottom of the stack is a Zircon-MM module for analog I/O with analog infrared distance sensors. A Pontech SV201 servo controller also needs to be attached to the serial port of the PC/104 module. When the PC is assembled it looks like this. After that come the assembly of the PC on the car base. Use Plexiglas as a base for the PC to sit on. Make some kind of harness so the PC does not fall off when moving. Attach analog infrared distance sensors to the Plexiglas on the under-side and a voltage regulator with a 5V output to the top directly under the PC. It looks something like this. A board needs to be made as an interface from the 50-pin I/O port of the Zircon-MM to the analog infrared distance sensors. This will look like this. A second layer of Plexiglas now needs to be made and put over the PC to make a protective top layer and to mount the Logitech Quickcam Express. The camera is mounted with two servo motors attached to enable movement on two axes. The mount should look like this. When the whole thing is
finally together this is what it
looks like.
There are many obstacles to overcome during this process. The first will be formatting the DiskOnChip. In order to do this, download the nftl_format boot floppy image then write it to a floppy disk. Writing to the floppy is simple. In Linux just 'cat' the file to the floppy device. Usually
the floppy device is /dev/fd0, so it
would look like this: Using DOS/Windows you will
need to download RAWRITE. Unzip this and at the DOS prompt type
this: Now you need to connect a
floppy drive to the PC/104 board and boot from this floppy. When the
machine boots and you get a prompt you will need to issue the following
commands: After that is completed you
will now be able to write an image to the
DiskOnChip
which will boot. Turn off the PC/104. Now you will need a
Windows95 DOS bootdisk. You can get the image
here. Again you
will need to write this floppy image to a floppy disk. In Linux do
this: Using DOS/Windows you will
need to download RAWRITE. Unzip this and at the DOS prompt type
this: Now you are ready to
install the Linux image. You have two choices. You can either
install the Linux 2.4.17 kernel
image and configure it, or install the
image we have created after
customizing. Regardless of your choice you will need to connect a
floppy drive and a hard drive to the PC/104 and boot from the Windows95
DOS bootdisk. The hard drive needs to have the image you wish to
install and DOC4.2 Utilities.
Put the utilities in a directory called doc42 and put the image in the same directory.
Now when you boot the machine to DOS, type this at the prompt: The image name is going to depend on which you have decided to install. If you decided upon the Linux 2.4.17 kernel with no customizations then it will be called LMZ2417.064. Otherwise it will be called ROBOT418.IMG. Now the machine should boot into Linux. If you used the
un-customized image (not recommended) then you will need to get the
wireless PCMCIA card to work. Our files for configuring a
Cabletron RoamAbout are
here.
Download these and put them in the proper directories as indicated by the
tar file and reboot the machine. This should work now as long as the
card is supported by the
orinoco_cs driver. The IP address will be 192.168.1.101. Software needed:
Hardware Manuals and Specifications: Many of these files no longer exist on this site and the links are broken. They will be fixed ASAP! |
