Thursday, June 19, 2008

CBA Robot Kit



The CBA (ChiBot Alpha) robot kit is a club robot for the Chicago Area Robotics Group (ChiBots). It is sold through BudgetBot.com. It was designed to be a suitable beginner robot. I wanted to get so that I could get the experience of putting the components together myself (especially soldering the components on the PCB). It features a Parallax Basic Stamp 2e OEM, so it is compatable with all my other Parallax goodies.

I had one glitch assembling it. I mounted the crystal about a 1/16" above the board. I did this because it is heat sensitive and I used a heat sink to protect it. As it turns out, this kept the Basic Stamp from being identified by its software. Luckily, the technical support for the ChiBot is excellent and with the help of Mike, it is working fine (he said he had never seen this problem before!).

I finished the rest of the assembly today and have had it running around on the floor. The kit has some accesories like a line following module and wheel encoder module also available from BudgetBot (these can be viewed at the web site).

I have attached a photo of the overall bot and a detailed photo of the assembled PC Board. My son has dubbed it the 2W Bot - (of 2 Wheel Bot).

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