TOOLBOX MAKE LOOKS AT KITS

Give Your Bot a Big Brain on a Tiny Board RoBoard RB- 100 Starter Kit

$290 trossenrobotics.com

The RoBoard (sold in the United States by Trossen Robotics) is essentially a 1GHz PC-compatible x86 board in a 96mm×56mm ×22mm ( 3. 78"× 2. 2"×0.85") package. It has 256MB RAM and all the normal ports you’d expect on a laptop: microSD slot, USB, Ethernet, VGA, PS/2, audio, and serial ports.

But it also includes the I/Os found on a microcontroller: I2C and SPI serial, 8-channel analog input, and 40 digital input/output pins. Somewhat uniquely, it also offers hardware support for up to 32 R/C servos. It does all this while drawing only 2. 5 watts of power (5V at 500mA).

The RoBoard can run any standard desktop OS that fits in 256MB of RAM and onto the 4GB “disk” of a user-supplied microSD card. At roboard.com, you can find good instruction manuals for installing Windows XP and Linux. You need an external USB floppy and CD-ROM for Windows, or a USB flash drive to install Linux. Installation is about as complex as on a netbook, except that you must supply your own monitor, keyboard, and mouse. I installed

158 Make: Volume 19

the recommended version of Debian Linux without a hitch.

Netbooks like the Eee PC can be considered competitors to the RoBoard. Netbooks run a real OS too and have the added benefits of wi-fi and more memory, but netbooks are still about 10 times larger and don’t include all those I/O pins.

Smartphones, like the G1 or iPhone, can work as bot brains, but are even more limited in their physical I/O connectivity. Wi-fi routers running Linux make great robot platforms, but are physically larger and have limited memory and I/O; some I/O issues can be solved by adding an Arduino board, but that increases size and coding complexity.

The RoBoard sits squarely in the middle and solves a lot of problems in a tiny package. Not having built-in wi-fi is a big minus, but can be remedied with a USB wi-fi adapter.

As a robotics hobbyist, I wish the price were a bit lower, but if you need the RoBoard’s capabilities, it’s well worth the investment.

—Tod E. Kurt