Hey all,

I haven't posted here in a while, but I'm not dead yet!

I've been busy with my 'bots. I'm finishing off my own version of a mobile camera platform, based on the Sonarbot platform I built with the Create last fall. When I'm done I'll have a semi-autonomous roving camera platform. The Cambot has given me a chance to revisit and re-work how I mounted the sensors on the original Sonarbot and I think I have something much closer to a "production" version now that I've had a couple iterations of the system to work through.

In the meantime, here are a couple widgets that I made that I've found to be pretty useful with the 'bots since they are both using the Command Module and both have that covered over with an equipment deck attached via the 6-32 mountpoints.

Command Module USB Port Extender



Nothing too terribly complex going on here, basically a female USB "B" plug soldered onto the end of a male "B" connector with some heat-shrink wrapped around it so that you can have easy access to the "Programming Port" even when you've got an equipment deck on top of the ports and buttons. You can make this longer by just leaving more cable on the male end.

Next is an adapter for your ePort. It's basically a DB9 male housing populated and then covered with Sparkfun DB9 breakout board and some right-angle break-away header.

Which basically means you can have this on your ePort:

I've found the socketed "header" arrangement to be much more serviceable and maintainable, esp. when you want to move different sensors to different ePorts or even different pins on the same ePort.