Five months ago, I wrote that we “just finished a big facility expansion that was taking up a lot of my attention this year, so I have some more time now …” Well, that turned out to be wrong. It’s also been over a year since I started this blog, and so far, I am way behind my target of an article per week. It doesn’t help when I don’t post for four months, but some exciting stuff has happened in that time. Continued…

Rocky the Robot by Patrick McCabe has a chassis that is entirely contained within the profile of its Pololu Wheels. It also uses our gearmotors, distance sensors and battery holder. Patrick has a detailed writeup on his site.

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	Pololu Wheel 90×10mm Pair - Black
	180:1 Mini Plastic Gearmotor, Offset 3mm D-Shaft Output
	Sharp/Socle GP2Y0A02YK0F Analog Distance Sensor 20-150cm
	2-AA Battery Holder

Lithuanian electronics manufacturer 8 Devices built this example rover platform using several items that we carry, including a Pololu Qik 2s12v10 Dual Serial Motor Controller, as a chassis for their Carambola, an open-source and Linux-friendly embeddable module.

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	Dagu Wild Thumper Wheel 120x60mm Pair with 4mm Shaft Adapters - Chrome
	47:1 Metal Gearmotor 25Dx52L mm HP 6V
	Pololu 25D mm Metal Gearmotor Bracket Pair
	Pololu Qik 2s12v10 Dual Serial Motor Controller

These projects by Daniel J. Sullivan are intended to introduce novice users to all the components on the 3pi robot and how they can be used while programming with the Arduino IDE. Each project builds on the one before it, and comments within the programs are used to provide background information when new items are introduced.

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Pololu 3pi Robot

As I discussed in the introduction to servos, one of the consequences of hobby servos’ intended use is that rotation range is limited to about 180 degrees. In this post, I will talk about two exceptions to this general rule: continuous-rotation servos and multi-turn servos. Each of these products loses some features in return for increased rotational range, so none of them are the ideal actuators many would like them to be. There are some specialty servos developed for robot applications that get around the limitations, but those servos are not as standardized and do not really fit into the hobby servo category, so I am not going into any more detail on those beyond mentioning that they exist. Continued…

This Netduino driver by customer Stefan Thoolen supports both the MiniSSC2 and the Pololu protocol for controlling a Pololu Micro Serial Servo Controller.

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Pololu Micro Serial Servo Controller (assembled)

Mr. Twitchy is a project that uses two Wixels to wirelessly control an electrical stimulation device. The project was featured in Sparkfun New Product post.

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Wixel Programmable USB Wireless Module

Blackbeard’s Chest by SkullTroniX uses two jrk motor controllers with feedback to control linear actuators as part of a spooky animatronic display.

A Mini Maestro 24-channel USB servo controller controls three servos in each of this insectoid robot’s six legs. For more information, see this thread on the Trossen Robotics forums.

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Mini Maestro 24-Channel USB Servo Controller (Assembled)

The Wixel Shield for Arduino that we released today represents a personal milestone because of what I did not do on it: the shield is the first electronic product made by Pololu that I did not design. That’s not to say I did not have some input on it or that other engineers here did not have substantial contributions to other products, but the Wixel Shield is a first because the basic product concept, the circuit design, and physical implementation (i.e. the PCB layout) were all done by someone else. We also just finished a big facility expansion that was taking up a lot of my attention this year, so I have some more time now to think about our design process and what it takes to go from a new idea to a finished product. Continued…