ISOPOD in action SRS Robomagellan contest

[John Mc]

I thought I would share my experience with the ISOPOD on my recent project of building a vehicle to compete in the Seattle Robotics Society's Robomagellan contest that is happening at the end of this month. You can have a look at the robot vehicle here:

http://www.nwlink.com/~jmc/merriwether.htm

I had a great time learning and programming the ISOPOD. I was a bit skeptical at first about how long it would take to learn a new language, especially after looking at some examples. I was quite surprised with the simple elegance of the FORTH language. I used the POD to take in data from a variety of sensors, run the hbridge for the drive motor, integrate a piezo gyro with the steering servo, read a hex keypad, etc .. and communicate with a mini 386 computer via a custom Parallel port interface.

Anyway, thanks for making such a great product!

...John

[RMDumse]

You are welcome! And thanks for the feedback. We enjoy hearing about how folks do with our products, and certainly prize such glowing reports. Best of luck with Merriwether.

And hey, when you get your links up, please do remember to link back to us, so others can find out about these products.

[John Mc]

I competed this past weekend in the RoboMagellan contest and had the distinction of getting closest to the final target, but did not hit it. No one was able to reach the target this year, but we did develop a great deal of interest in the event and several more West Coast groups are considering or planning to hold the event also. I can attribute my measure of success to the closed loop Gyro - Servo Ackerman steering system that I had running on the IsoPod. It was the one piece that operated abolsultely flawlessly. I think the IsoPod is terrific ! I will be updating my web site over the next month or so, and will give you a good write up for sure !

Thanks again ! ...John