Patience is the name of the game at this point. Pingbot v1 has been picked up by a major electronic kit distrubitor and will be available, well, sometime in the future. I'm starting to understand that progress can move relatively slowly in the professional electronic world, and that progress is made in time frames of months rather than weeks. More info to come when I have it.
Despite having a completely full list of projects to work on, I'm finding myself planning out version 3 of the pingbot. In the last six months I've learned a crazy amount about microcontrollers and PCB design, and with this new knowledge I could design a super Pingbot. One with more sensors, a uC with more functions, and a clean circuit board layout. All of this would equate to the robots being far more autonomous.
As is, the bots I've made are essentially puppets tied to an IR string; they don't make any decisions on their own and must be told what to do with a remote. Getting that to work was a milestone in itself, but now I want to start playing around with swarm behavior and the current design just doesn't have the power under the hood to do that well.
Progress marches on with the project and I think I may see the end in sight. Documentation for version 1 is 90% complete and new shells are ready to be printed. I can't wait to get the new versions, especially the pink one (it took a bit of work to make turbo thrusters that also looked like ears!)
In other news, I've soldered together the 3 v1 PCBs sans motors. Here within the next few weeks I'll have all three complete, including their shells, and the first squad of my robot army will be active.
Work on Version Two has been put on pause while I finish the total Version One package. I've been tempted to redesign v2 to use an Atmel arduino compatible chip in order to gain more PCB space and more outputs. It would be a massive endeavor to add onto the massive amount of work I've already created for myself, so I doubt that I will actually do that to myself.
I've enjoyed working on this project, it opened a lot of doors for me and was an awesome learning tool, but I'm ready to work on something new. My project wishlist has gotten massive while I've focused on these robots and there is some some cool stuff on there just begging to be created!
I often find that the more I learn, the less I know. Once I delve into a subject I soon realize that there is a mountain of things I don't know about it. Such has been the case of my attempts to make the Pingbot into a kit as I discover facets of the electronics industry that I never thought I would encounter. I was always aware that EE can be a complicated field, but I never needed to worry about anybody else working from my designs. It's a good thing I enjoy it.
I've been following the exploits of successful electronic entrepreneurs and am beginning to form a notion of how much work and time is involved in full scale kitting endeavors. It's humbling to say, but I know I'm not quite ready to jump into selling thousands, or even hundreds, of kits. At this point I feel that it will be best to take things slow to start and set my goals to creating and selling 10 kits and take it from there.
| Now on to the fun stuff! Design work has begun on new body shells to fit the soon to be released Jameco kit. Having the PCB completed makes creating new shells easy and fun and I'm having fun playing around with different looks. For the most part the new shells have a more sci-fi feel, but I do plan to make a few cute versions. | |
And of course, the most exciting recent news is the arrival of the v1 and v2 fabricated PCBs! Opening the envelope and seeing the shiny, new circuit boards felt like a childhood christmas morning. The best part is that everything seems to be correct! Sure, there were some pads that were a bit smaller than I would have liked, and my silkscreen labeling needed a few tweaks, but the boards will certainly function, or should. These boards brought with them a huge sense of empowerment as I realized how many slick PCBs I want to design. I can't wait to order my next set!
Now that the boards are here, only a few days of waiting for part deliveries stand between the completion of three new Pingbots. The four of the little guys swarming around will be madness!
People from all over have emailed me with ideas for their own version of the Pingbot. The most recent was a teacher designing a through hole version for use with his students and during our chat he told me about OSH Park. It is a batch order PCB process where orders are taken until they can fill up a sheet and then the designs are sent of for fabrication. For hobbyists this provides a way to get cheap, professional circuit boards that they couldn't possibly produce on their own.
| And I do mean cheap. Three pingbot PCBs only cost $16 and they should be here in just a few weeks! This is my first time ever submitting files that I created to a fab house, I can't wait to get the boards and see if I managed to design everything correctly.
I've spent many hours learning about how PCBs are fabricated and goofing around with Eagle, but this will be the first real test of that knowledge. If all goes well I will have a couple new Jameco Kit version Pingbots and a trio of v2s to play with, and that will be fun, but I will also then have two proven prototypes that can be cheaply replicated. It will be a huge advancement for the project.
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3D printing, my new crutch
The up3D printer that I won from instructables showed up this week and it has completely blown my mind. I've always had the problem of designing things that are too difficult to build, usually because of the tools needed. Thanks to this printer all of those limitations have instantly disappeared and I can simply print almost anything I can think of. Needless to say, this has distracted me from work on the Pingbot (and everything else) for the last week.
Kit Progress
I've submitted the Pingbot to Club Jameco in hopes of them producing a kit. I'm hoping that they will be interested in making v2 kits with IR communication, but I don't have a working prototype for it yet. With luck they may be willing to trust me on that part and help me make the prototypes. I'll learn more when they get back to me.
YouTube
In other news, I popped on my youtube account today and saw that the Pingbot video has received over 18k views! Time to make some more vids.
Well, Pingbot has a website now. It had to be done, and it will help me document things for myself at the very least. I hope that it doesn't become forgotten or unmanageable.
