The FlatBot Robot Hardware Workshop

This workshop will introduce sensor input, motor output, microcontroller I/O, and firmware design. The goal is to develop a robot controller that interfaces a larger computer to robotic hardware. You will interface with three different sensors: a contact sensor, a rotary position sensor, and a light sensor. You will connect these to three different output devices, a LED, a DC Motor, and a servo motor. The bulk of the workshop will be spent developing the firmware required to connect these components together. At the end of the workshop, you will have a good working understanding of how a robot I/O controller works, and what first steps to take to develop new hardware for future robotic platforms.

Development Tools

These are the development tools for Windows development. Download and install these three files in order. After you are done, download the test project, unzip into an empty directory, and build it.

WinAVR: GCC Tool chain for the AVR processors
Website| Cached File

AVR Studio: IDE and programmer for AVR processors
Website| Cached File

PuTTY: SSH client, which also supports serial communications
Website| Cached File

Code

HelloWorld: A small test project to make sure the tools compile
File

Hardware101: The source directory for the workshop
File

Documentation

Under Construction

James McLurkin