I'm Richard, a student engineer specialising in mechatronics. Since a young age I've been interested in robotics and engineering. I didn't start to use robotics until the year 2000 when I got a LEGO Mindstorms kit. From that point on I feel in love with robotics and artificial intelligence, spending many hours designing and programming the most efficient robots I could think of. It is only now after 2 years at university that I have enough confidence to design projects from scratch. Prior I had had many ideas but the kits I could find did not excite me enough to do anything with them. Now I have enough money I can invest in electronics and structural materials (rather than spend on student related activities) and design what ever I desire. Starting from the beginning of design process or building on other projects. This blog is a way for me to record what I do and for me to share my works.
So far, I have talked about major projects such as a 3D printer and a multi-copter. The 3D Printer I've put on hold as I've decided I would buy one and improve upon rather than building one and finding it to be an absolute failure. I'm not looking into a multi-copter as I can set this up to be autonomous and thus tinker with artificial intelligence. This will help me on my track to get more involved with Robotics.
Due to the complex nature of these projects, I'm using microcontrollers. I started proper microcontroller use with a MSP430, which for the life of me, I could not get to work. I've since moved onto AVR chips (recommended by a friend) which are great. AVR chips have their own limitations though and I've now bought some STM32 ARM chips. I always wanted to use ARM chips but had no idea where to start. I think learning basics with NQC (not quite C) on Lego Mindstorms as a kid, then AVR chips for a more bare metal system half way through uni, has been a great learning curve to get to ARM development. I will admit, I've only used AVR chips for about 6 months before moving onto ARM, but in that time, I've still learnt a lot. I changed over for a few reasons, one of which was I want the copter system to have the capacity to have artificial intelligence which just wont be processed fast enough on AVR. I think ARM will also lay a better foundation for my career.
