Draft Budget

I have now made a start on the electronics budget for 2009. Remarkably, there aren't any numbers on it yet. Instead I have a near exhaustive list of predictable electronics costs. As Rob reminded, I've included programmers and prototype costs as well as measures to ensure Button (the SR Server) has enough memory to cope with the hoped increase in multimedia content.

I hope to use the 'actual costs' column from the 2008 budget as a starting point before adding on the cost of items prefixed with a '+' on the budget. The next step is to estimate the costs of the new features and get the rest of the committee to write up the remainder of the budget.

The full draft is on the Trac wiki page: Draft Budget.

A copy is here:

Things that should go into the 2009 budget:

= Draft Budget =
The following is a list of entries in the electronics and hardware budget. The prices are yet to be estimated

== Prototyping & Development ==
 * Electronic 
   * MSP430 Programmers (x3)
   * PIC Programmers (x1)
   * PCB Etchant/Cladding/Equipment
   * Minor Component Costs
   * OLED/LCD dev costs
   * Motor Speed dev costs
   * Current sense dev costs
   * Single run of PCBs for testing

 * Mechanical
   * Electro-mechanical (servos, motors, switches)
   * Chassis
   * Misc

== Web & IDE Costs ==
 * Server
   * Replacement hard disks for Button
   * ...

== Kit Costs ==
Assume cost of last year plus items marked '+'

 * Motor Controller Board
   * + Reverse Polarity Protection
   * + Current Sense hardware (detect stalling)
   * + Motor Feedback (Optical Sensor)
   * + Clamping on Feedback pins

 * Joint IO Board
   * + More Status LEDS for IO
   * + Power LEDS

 * Servo Board
   * + Dual Power Supply Presence/Detection (cut off when 5V rail not present)
   * + Power and status LEDS

 * Power Board
   * + Battery Indicator
   * + Current sense for charge and discharge
   * + Replacement to charge/run switch (contentious)
   * + Reverse Polarity protection
   * + USB/Live Debug Alternatives to PIC
 
 * I2C
   * + Additional I2C connects for more modules (LCD) 
   * + Power requirements for I2C expander?!

 * USB 
   * + Keys
   * + Hub for extra keys/hardware
   * + Power to Hubs

 * Battery
   * + Battery and Chargers

 * Connectors
   * + RJ11 cables and terminals
 
 * Radio Module
   * + Xbee Modules
   * + Additional modules for arena

 * School Mechanical budget
   * + ?

 * Miscellaneous 
   * + Perspex enclosures/cover plates for boards (optional)

 * CPU
   * + Slugs (No change to xt86s)


== Competition Day Electronics ==
 * Computing Facilities
 * Tools
 * Spare kit

OLED Display

A slick OLED display for only £5.63 (in bulk -VAT). Very Useful for showing

• Splash Loading Screen (SR Logo)
  
• Slug boot time info/progress
• Digitial IO input values
• Motor Speed
• Debug information (print statements in code)
• I2C activity

From Farnell:
http://uk.farnell.com/1498853/optoelectronics/product.us0?sku=densitron-dd-12864we-1a

First Thoughts ..

Although I've been involved with Student Robotics from the start of this academic year, I perceived most of the electronics - including some of the components I have worked on - as nothing short of witchcraft. Never having seen a schematic for any of the boards until yesterday, I had only the beautiful yet chaotic PCBs to indicate the inner workings. Although I had a collection of acronyms and techno-babble to associate with each of the boards, I had little confidence in ever understanding the complete design.

This all changed yesterday after some well spent hours going through each of the sub-assemblies in tern with Rob. Through doing this I now have a much more complete model in my mind of how everything fits together and more importantly, how things can be fixed, improved and updated. Although I may have to reside to never understanding some details such as the custom linux distro and image recognition, at least I know enough to do by best to distribute these jobs to people who know more about them.

Pressing Issues
The most pressing of which are the budget and some kind of sensible schedule. The electronics budget with the gift of hindsight should be manageable and hopefully well founded. As for the schedule, this involves the regrettable chore of admitting how little time there is once the PCB manufacturing time, Component procurement latency and travel plans are crossed off the calendar.

Yet More Pressing Issues
This would be the (working title:) " new people to SR play around with kit and find lots of bugs and problems, day". My thoughts on how it should be run are:

1. Split group into two, ideally with equal numbers of soft/hardware people
2. Task 1: Get 'forwards-backwards' code running on both robots
3. Task 2: Team A play with the vision system, attempting to use all of its features such as block coordinates and colour recognition. Meanwhile Team B focus on the servo board. They will develop code to test the servo boards limits and expose any bugs
   
4. Task 3: Team A add the IO board and use it to further improve vision system tests, eg. use LED output to indicate number of blocks present. Team B use the IO board with analogue inputs and combine this with a mechanism of sorts and access how useful it is.
5. Task 4: Combine all the boards together to create a robot which does something interesting, eg, avoids /attracted to blocs,
6. Task 5: If time, both teams try and 'break' the IDE. Attempt to find its weaknesses and failings and offer suggestions for improvements.
7. Summary: As well as stopping after each task to discuss bugs and findings, there will be one big summing up session. Both teams present their conclusions to the group and we make note of the important ones
   

Goals

• Everyone gets to know everyone else
• Everyone else gets to know the electronics and kit that we've got to work with
• We find out about bugs we might have missed
• Everyone generates some ideas for improvements
• New people get excited and interested in what's going on
• New people demonstrate skills/interests that they have
• The IDE gets some much needed attention
• We finally get to play with the kit, instead of the schools

Here's hoping...

First Post

This blog is primarily intended for members of Student Robotics (see side panel for more) who want to keep up-to-date with the progress of the Electronic development. As well as reporting achievements and milestones I hope to blog about new ideas, interesting hardware and upcoming tasks.

For more information about Student Robotics, who we are, what we do and why we need support etc. visit http://www.studentrobotics.org .