L293D Motor Driver

We’re now stocking some Integrated Circuits (ICs) in our store for your robotics projects.

MCP3008 Analog to Digital Converter

The L293D is a stalwart of many robotic projects. The are lots of newer motor drivers on the market, but the L293D’s DIP packaging and rugged design make it a great option for quickly breadboarding up some motor control for your project.

The MCP3008 is an 8 channel, 10bit Analog to Digital Converter (ADC) that is a very popular option for projects that need to monitor analog signals. The MCP3008 is an especially good match for the Raspberry Pi which doesn’t have an ADC built in, but which can talk to the MCP3008 using its SPI interface.

It’s been really hectic here over the last few days, as we’ve been busy moving into our new offices, but we’re finally in, and can now get back on with making robots.

Incubator sign

We’ve been lucky enough to secure a place in the new Technology Incubator that recently opened at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory. The Bristol Robotics Laboratory is one of the biggest and best robotics laboratories in Europe, and this move gives us much more space, and a much better environment for developing our new products.

The new office space

Front View

Well, it’s taken us much longer than we would have liked, but finally, we’re pleased to announce the release of a brand new robot kit based around the popular Rover 5 chassis from Dagu. This robot kit combines the Rover 5 chassis, with a Seeeduino (an Arduino compatible controller board) to give you a complete robot with loads of great features. The kit is easy to assemble, and accessible for beginners, whilst providing the flexibility that more experienced robot builders need to build advanced robotic projects.

We’ve built this kit by combining components that we already sell in our store to create a complete robot. All the components have been selected and tested to ensure that they work well together, and we’ve written a manual describing step by step how to assemble the robot. We’ve also created sample code in the form of a wall following behaviour so that you can get up and running with the robot really quickly.

Back View

Buying the kit gives you a great saving compared to buying each of the components individually, but even if buying the kit is not for you, because you have some of the components already, we hope that the manual and sample code will provide some useful ideas for your own projects. Check the kit out here, and let us know what you think.

We’ve recently added some new products to our store. First up are a couple of new Arduino shields from Seeed Studio. We now stock their WiFi Shield and their Relay Shield, so now for almost any application, we probably have an Arduino Shield you can use.

Secondly, we’re pleased to announce that we now stock the BerryClip from our friends over at Raspberry Pi Spy. The BerryClip is a small affordable electronics kit that is a great project to get started with on the Raspberry Pi. It consists of LEDs, a switch and a buzzer, and provides a perfect introduction to both software and hardware interfacing.

WiFi Shield

Relay Shield

BerryClip

One of the main things missing, from the Dawn Robotics webstore up until now was sensors. Which is a fairly glaring omission when you consider that sensors are a large part of what makes a robot, a robot…

Well, we’ve now fixed the problem, with a range of sensors from Seeed Studio. Your robots can now detect walls and obstacles with the Ultrasonic range sensor, navigate with the 3 axis compass, and follow lines using the IR line sensor. For the full range, see the sensor section here.

Ultrasonic Range Sensor

Also, one of the other advantages of getting these sensors, is that it now allows us to put together more complete robot kits (the greyed out coming soon items on our main page). These will be bundles which give you all the parts needed for a complete robot, coupled with a discount for buying everything in one go. Hopefully, this will help save money, and reduce some of the confusion for people just getting into this fascinating hobby.

Line Follower Sensor

We’re pleased to announce that we’ve recently become a distributor for Seeed Studio, and as such we now have a brand new range of exciting products that you can use in your robotic projects.

Chief amongst these is the Seeeduino, Seeed Studio’s take on the Arduino, and a number of very useful Arduino Shields. Seeed Studio have really tried to innovate with the Seeeduino, making a number of changes, rather than just blindly ripping off the Arduino design, and as such, it offers a very useful, and affordable controller for your robotic and electronics projects.

That’s not all we have from Seeed Studio though, we have motors, a breadboard power supply and more. So, please, check out the new range, and start planning your next robot.

Ok, so the store is now up, along with our forums and this blog and tutorial website. Dawn Robotics is open for business!

You’ll probably notice that things are a bit sparse round here at the moment, but over the coming weeks, months, and hopefully years, we aim to expand things a lot. We’ll be bringing in new products for the store, providing tutorials and news for the robotics community, and generally making this a much more useful site for people interested in learning about, and building robots.

So, watch this space!