Andrey Mikhalchuk’s Blog

Somehow my kids became huge fans of different kinds of robots, starting from teleoperated planet explorers and ending with transformers. So I promised them to build a robot, and in a few days I ended up with this result which I’m pretty proud to share. It appeared that for $150 or less you can build pretty cool robot that is way easier to program then most robots out there on the market + its range is way larger then most toys have. Here’s how you can build your own inexpensive yet powerful robot…

For our robot we will need the following parts and tools:

Linksys WRT54G router and similar are very famous because of great modifications potential hidden in the device. For some purposes you may want to add a serial port to the router. You may need that for development purposes or to turn the router into a robot for instance. This post describes the procedure of taking the router apart so you can get access to the serial port connector hidden inside.

WRT54GL router is not capable of controlling mechanical parts as is. So we need to add a communication port to it. This post describes how to do that. The complete outline of the routerbot project can be found in this post.

Linksys WRT54GL original operating system was not designed to control external devices, so we need to rewrite it with something more suitable. This post explaines how to do this and provides the new firmware. You may also want to refer to the overall project outline.

Ufff… the most critical part of your robot project is done. Now it is time to do basic tests and assemble whatever you have done. Here’s is hwo you do that…

The routerbot we almost have built as descibed in the routerbot project is self-sufficient, but you can get more fun with it if you put an inexpensive wireless camera on top of it. This post describes how you can do that.

Unfortunately most servos you can get for a reasonable price are not the same. Each servo has its own parameters and the cheapest ones for not allow adjustments. Fortunately in the “routerbot OS” your can easily fix that problem. Here is how you can do that in the “routerbot” project.

I just noticed that my video about domestic router turned into robot got its 1000th viewer. This is my very first youtube video and I’m very proud of that.

If you’re thinking about what to do this weekend, building a robot for your kids could be a good idea. This is not very difficult and the result is really amazzzzing. You will get a robot that can be teleoperated via WiFi (i.e. you can control it from almost anywhere in the world) or programmed using shell script for the price way less then an average robot you can get in a hobby store.

More details about the projects are here: http://andrey.mikhalchuk.com/category/robots

After a hard day of development and testing I’m proud to announce Web interface for routerbot It greately facilitates roubot teleoperating. With this interface you have to use telnet and ssh no more. Instead, you just click on colorful arrows on a webpage and see the robot doing exactly what you clicked. Another interesting feature is that the web interface simplified programming.