AVC Bot Hardware & Source Published

Everything about Data Bus is completely open: hardware, software, everything. Needless to say there are no guarantees that it works... because obviously it didn't *grumble*  But anyway...

I think when we can build on—or learn from—the work of others it speeds progress and advancement. I think robotics contests should further everyone's knowledge. New participants should never have to reinvent the wheel.

Here's the code I ran on the mbed MCU:

http://mbed.org/users/shimniok/programs/AVC_20110423/lqaj8i

I released a number of libraries on the mbed.org site as part of the project.

GeoPosition does lat/long calculations: bearing, distance, movement
IncrementalEncoder handles calculations for the wheel encoders
Steering provides a platform independent way to calculate steering angle corrections
Schedule is a handy utility for scheduling events by polling Timer values
SimpleFilter implements a simple "leaky integrator" filter for integers
ADC128S is a driver for the 8-ch analog to digital converter I used
LSM303DLH is a driver for the so-named tilt compass
TinyGPS is a port of the Arduino library to mbed with some methods added
TinyCHR6dm parses yaw output from the AHRS I chose

I've placed a snapshot of documentation, electronics designs, software from April 23, 2011 on my Google Code repository here:

http://code.google.com/p/bot-thoughts-ugv/source/browse/#

Here's the mbed code:
http://code.google.com/p/bot-thoughts-ugv/source/browse/#svn%2Ftags%2FApril%2023%202011%2FSoftware%2Fmbed

Here are the analysis scripts I used to plot dead reckoning, gps, compass calibration, etc.:
http://code.google.com/p/bot-thoughts-ugv/source/browse/#svn%2Ftags%2FApril%2023%202011%2FSoftware%2FAnalysis

All the schematics and board layouts are here:
http://code.google.com/p/bot-thoughts-ugv/source/browse/#svn%2Ftags%2FApril%2023%202011%2FElectronics

Various documents like the BOM, are here:
http://code.google.com/p/bot-thoughts-ugv/source/browse/#svn%2Ftags%2FApril%2023%202011%2FDocumentation