I am interested in the programming and mechatronical (servo motion control etc) of robotics and much less in soldering.
Are there any robotics kits that lets me hookup a FPGA or ARM board? I want to experiment with computer vision and motion control (differential equations etc).
i got this: http://www.ebay.fr/itm/Hexapod-Six-Feet-Robot-Spider-Arduino-DIY-Robot-KIT-18DOF-NO-SERVOS-/281834708588?hash=item419ea85e6c:g:OkoAAOSweW5VPTL7
this: http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Free-Shipping-5PCS-LOT-SG90-9g-Mini-Micro-Servo-for-RC-for-RC-250-450-Helicopter/2036064605.html?spm=2114.01010208.3.2.0wgnBP&ws_ab_test=searchweb201556_0,searchweb201602_5_10037_10017_405_404_507_10032,searchweb201603_2&btsid=3e93c786-715e-410f-840e-08088077e63a
a pca9685, and a bunch of 18650, 18650 holders, and a voltage regulator. You can mount the control board with M3 size supports.
There is also a fuckton of books out there for using a raspberry pi for robotics. I've built a small one, now I am working on one that will be about the size of a powerwheels. There's a ton of shit on ebay and amazon that is basically plug and play too. I'm more into the building side myself, so I am approaching it from the other direction. All my programming is cut and paste shit.
>>1012903
>I am interested in the programming and mechatronical (servo motion control etc) of robotics and much less in soldering.
There is not much soldering involved in building robots, if you want it that way.
Method #1: you use a rasberry pi as the brains, and it has one camera port on it. you slave a arduino mega to that to act as an input/output interface through USB, to operate motor controllers, to run stepper motor drivers, to make stepper motors turn
Method #2: just like #1, except that you use a laptop PC as the brains instead of a rasberry pi, and you use one or more USB cameras for video input.
>Are there any robotics kits that lets me hookup a FPGA or ARM board? I want to experiment with computer vision and motion control (differential equations etc).
An FPGA could *potentially* be the fastest type of processor you could use--but then, the biggest & fastest FPGA chips cost hundreds of dollars.
Last time I looked, the top-end Altera cost up around $550 USD, just for the chip. Just like with PC CPUs, performance is not free,,,, or even cheap.
Also IMO,,,,, FPGA programming is rather obtuse, especially for things as complex as machine vision.... (...also note that your cell phone can 'see' QR codes, and it doesn't need an FPGA...)
Also the toolchain is complicated; there is a pretty steep learning curve. The cheap $15 China FPGA boards usually *work*, but come with zero instructions.
The Mojo board is supposed to be one of the easier FPGA's to use; it costs $80 from the US seller. https://embeddedmicro.com/mojo-v3.html
(there is also $40 china clones of the mojo, but I dunno if they really work right or not)
As for ARM chips,,,,, the rasberry pi already has an ARM chip in it (I think it's a dual-core now?)--but a laptop PC could have a better processor and way more storage than that.
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Not impossible to do, and doesn't need to be expensive either. Kinda a lot to learn tho.
Pic related: sexbot dreams
