This post has also been posted to http://www.devrandom.us


A week have passed since my last update. Here is where I stand now:

Hardware/connectivity wise:

-Efika is booting properly, still working on Wifi connectivity (having some driver issues), serial communication with iRobot base is also progressing (this will allow for reading the iRobot's on-board sensors, controlling motors, reading wheel encoders, etc)

-iRobot Create has been received from www.irobot.com, I have reserved the University laser-cutter to cut some special aluminum plates for mounting the board, webcam, and other peripherals. I will hopefully have a name for the bot by then to engrave in the aluminum. (suggestions welcome)

-Batteries have been received, still need to test powering the efika with them.

-Need to get newly-ordered usb webcam operating with efika so users can see what the robot sees and control it

-Try to devise a method of monitoring battery life so that the robot can go into a "survival mode" to disable all unnecessary devices and seek a power station (the one irobot sells would work nicely for this purpose, but unfortunately that plus a irobot rechargable battery would cost about $150, a bit more than I would want to spend at this stage)


Software-wise:

Festival has been installed for speech communication with users in the outside environment. The board currently announces (yes, speaks aloud) it's dynamically assigned IP address as soon as it is done booting so I can know if the address has changed since the last bootup. This allows me to continue to run the board headless, while allowing me the flexibility of running the board on any network with a dhcp server.

I've decided to settle on a language I've never used before for the first step: c#. I've sucessfully compiled the mono runtime environment and have tested a few basic C# apps on the board. I figured I might as well learn a "different" language while working on this project.

Once I have the web-based interface up and running, and users from the forums controlling it from the web, I will begin with phase-2, getting myself and my father's projects communicating. (He is currently working on a home-made base, taking a somewhat different approach from me) The goal here is to get the robots to collaborate on such tasks as mapping rooms, swaming and moving as one robot, as well as communicating about the environment.

Now that I've got a Stage4 Gentoo install running on the board, i've decided to go ahead and order a serial controlled iRobot create base. This will allow me to easily monitor on board sensors, as well as allow the efika to control higher functions, such as vision (soon to come) detection and speech.

Also, bbrv was kind enough to also supply a second Efika board for my father, once these bots are up and running, we should be able to get them communicating with each other via ad-hoc wifi to accomplish tasks.

Just so the readers know, I havnt been posting here because i've setup my own webspace over at www.devrandom.us, please check it out

I'm very excited this project has been approved by Genesi. The Efika board's power consumption should certainly be ideal for this project. That said, an Efika with an on board fpga, as well as a pci slot would probably be ideal for this project for a number of reasons:


-could possibly integrate a microcontroller onto the fpga that could include pwm control, a/d converter for sensor inputs, etc.

-pci would allow for a pci wireless card for "base station" communication with the home network.

-usb ports would then be left open for other devices such as a webcam, etc.