This week I decided that it was high time I got back into some projects.  My next goal is to create another robot.  This one will be quite a bit more intelligent, though.  The robot will be controlled by a PC (probably a Windows laptop, although I have several mini-ITX options as well).  Most laptops no longer have serial ports, so the robot will need to be controlled via USB.  Although it won’t suffice for later revisions AT90USB647 seems like a good choice for right now.  It has six 16 bit PWM channels, and four 8 bit channels.  The device supports USB, and serial interfaces.  Perhaps best of all, it supports enough USB endpoints that it could conceivably show up as two serial ports.  One could accept commands locally and the other could pass them on to another chip that doesn’t support USB…say ATMega2560 (25 PWM channels).

There are a couple of hiccups.  My most recent circuit board was an AT90USB647 board, and it was also a failure.  After trying to revive the existing prototype I decided it would be better to update the design and try again.  Unfortunately my PC died in the interim, as did my wife’s printer.

You can easily see why my PC failure is a problem.  Getting a well-tuned environment running again is a pain.  The failure of my wife’s printer might not be so obvious though.  No printer, no PCB printing mask.  She’s buying another one tomorrow, so hopefully that will solve the printing issue.

Also, I have not used my mill in months…but I really don’t want to hand drill a bunch of holes.  My supplies are running low, and I also want to try using a toaster oven to reflow a board.  So, here is the plan.  I’ll cut two boards and chuck one into the mill and pre-drill it.  The other will be hand drilled (ick).  The existing board will donate its parts, thanks to some help from ChipQic.  Whichever board looks less successful will get paired with the used chip, and then it will be baked and reflowed.  The other board will get the usual hand treatment.

So, barring any major supply shortages (which wouldn’t shock me) I should come up with a working prototype by this time next week.  Keep your fingers crossed for me!  By the way, the new printer is an HP OfficeJet.  It looks like a fantastic machine.  Hopefully it will work as well as our super cheap HP inkjet did!