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Discounts at RobotShop For National Robotics Week

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Discounts at RobotShop For National Robotics Week

Are you ready for National Robotics Week 2015? The sixth annual National Robotics Week event will be held April 4-12, 2015.

We invite you all to join us in the celebration of the National Robotics Week. For this very special week, RobotShop is offering a discounts on selected products for all robot makers and robot enthusiasts. Note that some products will only be on special starting April 4th.

National Robotics Week

The Purpose of National Robotics Week is to:

Celebrate robotics technology development
Educate the public about how robotics technology impacts society, both now and in the future
Advocate for increased funding for robotics technology research and development
Inspire students of all ages to pursue careers in robotics and other Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math-related fields

This event is intended to recognize robotics technology as a pillar of 21st century innovation, to highlight its growing importance in a wide variety of areas and to emphasize its ability to inspire technology education. Robotics is positioned to fuel a broad array of next-generation products and applications in fields as diverse as manufacturing, health-care, national defense and security, agriculture and transportation. At the same time, robotics is proving to be uniquely adept at enabling students of all ages to learn important science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) concepts and at inspiring them to pursue careers in STEM-related fields.

Working On Robots

At RobotShop, our mission is to put robotics at your service! We know the importance of robotics in our society. Our vision is to be the world leading source for personal and professional robot technology that help increase the pleasure, knowledge, liberty and security of individuals. We are also committed to promoting and advocating the interest and necessity of robotics use towards positive ends, allowing humanity to attain a better world.

Don’t miss out on discounted products from April 4-12, 2015. Along with selected discounts, benefit from RobotShop’s new shipping fees. RobotShop now offers free shipping for orders Over $75.

Free Shipping Over $75

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LIDAR-Lite Laser Rangefinder – Simple Arduino Sketch of a 180 Degree “Radar”

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LIDAR-Lite Laser Rangefinder – Simple Arduino Sketch of a 180 Degree “Radar”

Example Two-Wheeled Robot

Range Finding

Finding the range of an object in front of your robot is a rather simple task and has been done reliably using sonar and IR range sensors for a long time. In most cases, those two types of sensors fulfill the basic needs of the robot when it comes to distance measurement. Sonar can provide good ranging on most surfaces but they have wide detection beams that can easily be interfered with. On the other hand, IR range sensors provide a confined beam that is very small but suffers from reflective differences on varying surfaces, thus changing the distance readings. Until recently, there was no good option for projects on a hobbyist budget which needed a long range, high precision, small detection beam for distance measurement.

LIDAR-Lite Laser Rangefinder [RB-Pli-01]

LIDAR-Lite Laser Range Finder

We would like to introduce you to the LIDAR-Lite Laser Rangefinder [RB-Pli-01] from PulsedLight. This affordable and compact laser range finder is all the robotics enthusiast with ranging needs could want! It features laser range finding for distances of up to 40m (~131 feet) with an accuracy of ± 2.5 cm (~ 1 inch) and an acquisition time under 20 ms. All of this is offered in a module that weighs 16 g (~ 0.56 ounce) and consumes less than 100 mA @ 5 V DC (under 2 mA idle). The device uses a simple I2C interface to communicate the distances measured.

Servo-mounted LIDAR-Lite

Arduino Example

To demonstrate how easy this device is to use, we provide here a simple example of a 180 degree “radar” using the LIDAR-Lite, a small servo motor and some mounting brackets.

BoM (Bill of Materials)

Here is the list of what parts were used to make this example:

*: Please note that while we used a HS-645MG in our example, the HS-422 and almost any other standard RC servo motor could perform this task.
**: We used some double sided tape to hold the LIDAR-Lite in place on the bracket.

Setup

Below you can find the wiring diagram for connecting the Lynxmotion BotBoarduino to the servo motor and the LIDAR-Lite using one power source for both logic and servo. Check here for a wiring diagram using two power sources for the Lynxmotion BotBoarduino.

Wiring Diagram with One Power Source

Sample Code

You can find the source code here.

Output

The output of the sample code is in a simple format of one line per measurement reading, indicating the angle and distance of each reading. This output is meant to be read by a human. If interfacing with another microcontroller or a computer, it is recommended to have a more compact (probably binary) format for the output with some error correction to ensure the validity of the data. Below is an example of the output of the example code.

Typical Output in Arduino Serial Monitor

We look forward to seeing what you do with your LIDAR-Lite!

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