Build a Tracked Drive Robot - How I built TrakBot

I got a comment on this blog a few days ago and I decided to take on the project someone suggested. While they thought the TrakBot was interesting, they wanted more of a "how-to" so they could build their own trakBot.

From TrakBot: Build Your Own Track Drive Robot

Since, as many of my readers know, I'm deeply involved in creating a new website which is all about "how-to" do things. How to put together a dual H-Bridge, to how to put together or mod a robot, or just about anything else.

I made the commitment! I would create an article for CwhatIcanDo.com about how to build the actual robot that I showed on this website. I really just talked about it and generalized about things like software, how it all worked and most of all, no schematic.

So I decided to make a project for CwhatIcanDo just to see how long it took and at the same time, to answer the comment on this blog.

The result lives Here This is the project broken out in a How-To complete with schematics and software on the CwhatIcanDo Alpha Website. It's not quite ready for a full Beta release, and doing this project just reminded me what I still have left to do. But, even so, I built a nice project. It took about 4 hours with a ton of interruptions. I think the time to create a project will get better in the future (before the site actually opens to the public) but I'm pretty excited about the outcome.

(Updated Nov 3, 2008): There are a couple of other work-around type bugs, but the point is, it can be done. And the results are pretty nice. But I'll let my blog questioner answer that. Does he believe he could build his own trakBot and learn a lot in the doing?

The current workaround, Nov 3, 2008 is simple: You'll have to supply your videos from your own YouTube or Google Video account, the software is not yet set up to allow you to upload videos and pictures from the Creator's Tools. Enjoy becoming an alpha tester!! But a lot of ppl have YouTube Accounts anyway. And, soon, the tools will all be implemented.

If you want to visit the website in Alpha Test (Release Candidate 1), you'll have to go "around" the main page, that doorway won't be open until the actual Beta Site release. We are shooting for "around Thanksgiving" to open the Beta Site.

Visit the Open Alpha Test at cWhatIcanDo.com/main/ Open for ppl who are guided there on my Blog (here) or other fairly private links on various Blogs as the site is "discovered"...