Currently selling my current robot platform. Great headstart for someone wishing to build a robot. It includes

Three(3) levels
abt 8" diameter
abt 8" high
omni-directional motor wheel for balance
two servos modified for continuous rotation
UMHW wheels with rubber tires
Wheels have patterns for detecting rotation
Two(2) SRF04 Ultrasonic detectors with housing
Two(2) Solutions Cubed Motor Mind B Controllers
Two(2) Hamatsu photoreflectors with custom circuit boards

Selling on ebay:
Experimental Robotics Platform

Selling my Systronix JSTAMP Development kit on ebay. This is a native execution Ajile Java microprocessor (512K Ram/2048K Flash. Great tool for robotic applications. The ebay link is:

JSTAMP Development kit

Also selling a new unused Polaroid Ultrasonic rangefinder.

Polaroid Ultrasonic Rangefinder

I haven't had the time to pursue this hobby so I've decided to sell off my electronics, parts, etc... Looks like I will be selling controllers, bases, BOEbot, stamps, JSTAMP, Javalin and many components of the next several weeks on ebay.

I decided to take a break from working on the bots and celebrate the aniversary of Ben Franklin's kite experiment. Since flying a kite in an electrical storm is a potentially lethal exercise I decided to construct a high voltage power supply and a leyden jar.

I forgot how much fun electro statics and high voltage experimentation could be. I think I might try some exploding wire experiments...

I am still working on the various modules for CIRCE-II; however, even though I have the JSTamp development system the lack of functional hardware is preventing me from developing the software for this system.

I recently decided to purchase the BOE-BOT parts from Parallax along with their new Javalin Stamp Starter Kit. I received the kits yesterday. I've already started developing the low level motor control classes. While the low level hardware control will certainly be different from CIRCE-II this environment allows me to start developing all but the upper level AI code.

Using this approach I can alternate between HW/SW/Sensors. In addition the need to port the software between two different embedded java environments should make for a better software design.

The pc boards from ExpressPCB arrived on friday. I cut them apart and assembled the Intervalometer and the two wheel encoder boards.

I tested the Intervalometer and the board appears to perform as expected. I used my new WARP-13 programmer for the first time burning the code for the intervalometer. The ability to burn code from MPLAB is great. I'll probably toss out my old Parallax programmer.

After spending most of Saturday refining the intervalometer code I have begun reverse engineering the Olympus Remote Control RC-200 to allow the intervalometer to emulate this trigger mechanism, instead of using the micro servo trigger for the EPIC. The system appears to use two pulse groups repeated three times. I want to keep taking samples.

Made progress on several projects this weekend. First I downloaded, compiled, and installed XCircuit. Xcircuit is an open source Schematic Capture software. It's Xwindows based but runs well under the CYGWIN extensions on Windows 98.

I used XCircuit to create full schematics on several projects that I had made notes on in my workbook. These are an intervalometer, a photogate timer/flash trigger circuit and a complete first draft of the circuit for CIRCE- I.

I drafted a circuit board for the intervalometer using Express PCB software and miniboard service. I had extra space on the board so I included 3 small boards for mounting a Hamatsu P5587 Photoreflector, it's required external components and a small header for attaching to a master circuit board.

I have also begun wire-wrapping both the CIRCE-I circuit and the photogate timer/flash trigger circuits.

I have finished assembling the CMUcam and successfully testing the system. This will serve as one of the two primary sensors for navigation purposes. These navigation sensors will be two CMUcams and a Polaroid sonar sensor to provide binocular vison, supplemented by sonar.

I have also finished assembly of two Devantech SRF04 sonar sensors to function as forward looking collision detectors.

I received the JStamp development station this week and plan on spending a little time experimenting with it. One or more of these JStamp modules will serve as the computation platform for the higher level functions on CIRCE-II.