You might think a geek like me has been building robots his whole life. I haven't never actually built one before. As a kid I wanted pre-packaged kits, and had a few simple toy robots, including Lego's Technic series before they created the Mindstorm robotics series, but never had a "real" robot before.
So lately I've been thinking and reading about hobby robotics (as opposed to industrial robotics) and have identied 4 robots (or partials) that I want to build. The first is from David Cook's Robot Building for Beginners book (that I don't have) called Sandwich, it is a simple automous non-programable line follower that uses a dual voltage comparator the LM393 for its logic (its 'brain'). Last night I stuffed the professional made Sandwich PCB from Solarbotics with nearly all of the components, except I didn't have two 20K variable resistors (trimpots) in my workshop. Through the speed of Digikey (CDN) I ordered them (along with parts for my third robot) early last night, and about 14 hours later they were on desk at work. So I should be able to finish the PCB board tonight and think about general assembly. I plan on using a couple Solarbotics GM2 with red wheels to drive Sandwich.
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