First Post

9. February 2010 by admin.

So, pretty excited about the Sparkfun Autonomous Vehicle Race in April.  Is this great, or what??  I wish I had $1 M so that I could come in last in the real DARPA challenge but I guess I’ll have to settle for coming in last in Boulder.

Here are my specs as requested by the Sparkfun race organizers:

Team Name:                                      Geeknight Avenger 2000

Vehicle Type:                                     Roadster

Dimensions:                                        about 12” x 16” x 6”

Weight:                                              about 10 lbs

Special Vehicle Requirements:           Needs to win or gets very angry

Kill Switch:                                        Oh, there’ll be a kill switch, alright… mooohooowahaha

Some pics to start things off:

Side view…

Annotated top view…

 Covered top view…

Technical specs:

The main board is a PIC 16f877a programmed in Hi-Tech/Microchip C.  It’s got an LCD read out and will be using a Pololu motor driver board and a Devantech CMPS03 digital compass.  For GPS, I’m using a USGlobalSat em-406a GPS module with a Geeknight I2C/GPS Interface board.  Yeah, shameless promotion, baby!!

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