Last Friday I’ve received new Futaba S3001 servos. Turns out they are more easier to modify to Hitec’s, and at the same seem more reliable. I’ve simply followed this Instructable, and you can also find some additional photos in my gallery. What most important the servos are also easier to calibrate, so now my SERB will actually stop in place when I want it.
Below is a short video of the completed SERB robot where it just runs in random directions:
This weekend I’ve also started looking at Microsoft Robotics Development Studio 2008. This environment promises easy entry level to robotics. However this is true only when you have a compatible robotics platform (like Lego Mindstorms NXT, fishertechnik, iRobot and few others). There are pretty good tutorials on how to control these robots both from C# and from VPL. However before I can apply them to my SERB robot, first I need to implement the hardware interface and generic services to control the robot. Not much information on this and closest what I found so for is the Robotics Tutorial 6 – Remotely Connected Robots. It would be cool to get more detailed example on writing such services, but fortunately source code of services for other robots is included. In particular I’m trying to understand the code for iRobot and this additional service for VEX Robotics. If you know of any other good examples or tutorials please let me know.