Hello All,

Still waiting patiently for the Nano-ITX motherboards, prior to this month all of the distributors where saying that they would have them available by Jan 2005. Now they are saying June, anyone have any insight as to what happened and if there's some way of getting one sooner, maybe in a bare bone system?

DARPA Grand Challenge team recruiting (Southern California †` Orange County)

Team RoboShack intends to field an entry to the DARPA Grand Challenge 2005, we have our vehicle platform and 80% of the electronics package, however, our welder / fabrication expert has left our team, leaving this position vacant. We are looking for a highly motivated and skilled replacement.

Interested individuals should send the following information to: whophlungpoo@yahoo.com

Required information: 1) List of skills 2) List of tools and equipment 3) Schedule and availability, i.e. the ability to work nights and weekends.

Any other information you wish to share is also appreciated.

Jin Sato,

WOA! Super cool, please post more videos!

Jin Sato,

That is a most excellent piece of work, please post some videos of your robot walking and moving when you have the time.

I know that what I am about to share isn't even the slightest bit related to robotics, however, its definitely work saying: my wife came home from the doctors office this morning with a prescription that forbids her from speaking for a period of no less than 72 hours. I was totally and completely amazed at this, I'm planning on going out tonight after work and purchasing at minimum a dozen roses...... and send them to my doctor with a thank you note attached. Not only did she manage to keep my wife quite for 72 hours, my insurance covered the bill.....

Hey Tim,

How do you consider that a good news / bad news situation, I see that as a GOOD news and More GOOD news situation; I've been involved in manufacturing and what not for a very long time and fully understand how all of this works. The good news being, VIA is in the process of manufacturing the Nano-ITX and the other good news is that I will be able to get some. So what if I have to wait a little more! I would have to say that a (standardized) 4.5in x 4.5in motherboard is well worth the wait.

Awesome!!!!!!!

I periodically check the VIA site for any info on the Nano- ITX product, and finally, this very morning, the Nano-ITX is under the listed products. Could this in fact mean that we will be able to get our hands on them soon?

My new robot controller is coming along nicely; I have the TCP/IP stack up and running on the embedded hardware, just waiting patiently for those VIA Nano-ITX motherboards to become available.

I decided to used the Ethernet port to communicate with the VIA motherboard, that leaves the USB ports open for Bluetooth and 80211. Not to mention, normally the Ethernet port would be pretty useless on a mobile robot

At last, after 4 years of exciting robot building, my company is moving the facility where I work here in southern California, back east! Brrrrrr! Much too cold for me, I will remain here, although I will be unemployed some time around June, I will still be warm :)

Any ways, if any one is looking for an Electrical / Software engineer with lots of robot building experience here in the LA / Orange county area, send me an email: whophlungpoo@yahoo.com

Inspired by VIA`s Nano-ITX I started to develop a universal remote development system for robotics users; at this time I have the hardware interfacing COM object completed and I am vary close to releasing the first look at the development tools; IDE, runtime engine and miscellaneous hardware engines. The first version of the IDE / Runtime will support Pascal; subsequent releases will include Basic and C++; also if there is enough interest I will develop a Lisp version.

The DeviceIOControl object is now available for download from my site; you can get a jump start on your next PC based robot project by writing the hardware interfacing portion now! You can find the files here: http://www.roboshack.com