I’ve built a few robots that are documented on this site, both using Arduino and MSP430. But I’ve wanted for a while to build a robot platform that my kids can use. This is the motivation behind starting the online MSP430 IDE, as I want to make a visual programmer out of it (eventually).
My kids have a snap electronics set which they use a lot, and I was thinking maye Grove, which seems like a nice concept. I’ve also been reading 43oh.com‘s forum and seeing various ideas there. Today on Hackaday there was a post about one simple robot platform, which I guess is similar in functionality to some of the boards I’ve made for my own use with DIY equipment. It seems quite nice, and has some simple functionality. Good work.
I keep on wanting to build one myself though… some more thoughts:
- It should be open source and hopefully there should be a community working on it.
- Maybe it could be extendable for example to Grove and be able to use sensors and devices from that?
- It should primarily be for the MSP430 launchpad.
- It should be simple enough for a kid to use. The plugs need to be simple. I’ve been thinking about using 3.5 stereo audio jacks, but maybe it’s better to go for the same as Grove.
- It should have a graphical online IDE, but also be programmable with textual code (Is EasyMSP a good option perhaps?)
- It should have servo-plugin capability, possibly a motor driver (could be external or plugin) and simple plugins for a number of sensors.
- It should be quite small. It might be that a Launchpad Boosterpack size is too large.
Now that I’ve started to open my eyes for ordering PCBs and making kits to sell (possibly through a distributor), this may be one of the projects I’d like to work on. At least if I can get some help from the community at 43oh.com.