Robot talk
Now that I have wireless communication link between my rover bot and my iMac I have found trouble shooting is much easier. I just insert a few Serial.println(a); or some such into the program. This tells me if the program is flowing in the manor that I expect. Often this simple line shows me programing errors that would normally frustrate the hell out of me.
But I also found that is kind of amusing to have the little Rover Bot give me useless information just for the hell of it. For instance I put a blue button on top of the bot so I can pause the program at any time. This helps when it gets stuck and I just need it to stop struggling and allow me to re-position the thing. It used to just turn on a blue light, pause for five seconds, and then go off on its merry way. Now I have it give me messages over the radio to my iMac. I also put in a random element so it doesn’t always say the same thing.
I push the blue button….
It displays “Thanks, I needed the break”
Then counts down “5, 4, 3, 2, 1,… Go!”
Or,
“Uh oh… time out”
“5, 4, 3, 2, 1”
Or,
“Crap, lay off the damn blue button. I was doing fine”
“5, 1, 4, 2, 3, hahaha.”
I also have it give me messages when it bumps into objects. This is kind of a rare event as the IR sensors do a good job of avoiding objects, but it does happen.
If you were my rover bot, what would you want to say? When?
Pf
