Driving Straight and Turning with the MPU-6050

  Make your robot drive straight (ok, well, straighter) using the MPU-6050 6-Degrees-of-Freedom accelerometer/gyro. This is another presentation given to the Nashua Robot Builders. Here’s the Arduino code: _2020Bot_MUP6050.ino.zip Please note… the Arduino code isn’t up to my usual standards, but it will show you a few things.  Pay attention to the required libraries (links […]

2020 Bot Motor Control Examples

I just updated the 2020 Bot Arduino Library to include a couple motor control examples: https://github.com/robojay/_2020Bot_Library One uses the delay() function between motions. This is great for ease of understanding, but not so great to use in practice. The delay() function blocks the robot from doing most other tasks until the time expires. The second example […]

IR Proximity Sensing

When you build a robot, it’s nice to have layers of sensors.  You can think of the layers either top down (maybe starting with a 3D laser scanner), or from the bottom up (are my motors stalled?).  Proximity sensing sits on one of the lower layers, and generally is used as “Hey, there’s something near […]

2020 Bot Parts from China

This week I received a box full of possible 2020 Bot parts direct from China.  For this order, my goals were to evaluate supplier quality and get an idea on shipping volumes, weights, and costs.  I’m seriously considering whether or not it makes sense to offer 2020 Bot kits, or just provide instructions and let everyone fend […]