Pics of My Bot

Here is my robot with a little makeover. I call him CDR ( Compact Disc Robot ). Got a new smartphone this week, so I can finally post some pics and later vids.

Front View:

Bottom view ( Power supplies and gear motor ):

Circuit Board( reusable as dev board ):

Random Ramblings

   Hmmm... Finally got some parts from Sparkfun. I can now program my chips from my laptop thanks to the usb to serial dongle. Hoorah! I got the Sharp IR receiver working by reading over the ADC channel on AN1.
   Worked on the Python code some more. I now have a class to load the hex file and start the serial port. The next step is to write the code to communicate with the pic. from the pic side, I'll write my program and the bootloader_test all at once. The bootloader_test will get called on reset, listen for the start and timeout after 1 sec. If it gets the start signal, it will read in each line and spit it back to the PC.
   If that goes well, I'll move on to making it write the new program *shudder*. For some reason, this makes me a bit nervous.
   Other parts I got from Sparkfun will allow me to wire up the LCD board. I'll let it be powered by another board. I think I'll use the 16C84 chip I have laying around. I now have a 10MHz ceramic that I can use for it. I just need to convert the 16F84A code at 20MHz to work with it.
   I should also wire up a board for USART from the PC. Before I do that, I'll probably get a DB9 part that has right angles to a board. Forgot to get that on my last order...