RoboSavvy Forum

Glossary for dummies like me?

2006-09-06T09:42:42+01:00

Hi,

Yes this can be a bit of a mine field. The old TLA's are a pain. (Three letter abreviations..!!) Just to elaborate on what has been said above.

I would be happy to host a page of such info if people would like to contribute.

DOF degrees of freedom and refers to the number of joints. eg the "standard" RoboNova arm has 3 DOF. 2 in the shoulder and 1 at the elbow.

PWM pulse width modulation is a means of sending a pulse stream for various reasons. Servo's use a type of PWM to set their position eg a 1-2ms (thousanth of a second) pulse every 20ms depending on your servo. True PWM is more to do with averaging power through duty cycle eg ratios of off to on over the pulse cycle.

LIN and CAN are both bus type as mention before.

The long and short of it is, if your not sure then post. We are all here to help eachother.

Statistics: Posted by XenoEvil — Wed Sep 06, 2006 9:42 am

Glossary for dummies like me?

2006-09-05T23:54:40+01:00

I decided to start with the Robot Building for Dummies book. Ordered it from Ebay for $6.25 with shipping included. The description implies things are explained in “plain English”. That’s certainly what I need.

Thanks again everyone!

Statistics: Posted by Zembot — Tue Sep 05, 2006 11:54 pm

Glossary for dummies like me?

2006-09-04T21:39:33+01:00

Hi Zembot,

One cool site i found recently is http://wiring.org.co which sells an educational development board (sold for example by sparkfun.com) based on Atmega128 similar to the one used with RN1 and gives tutorials about using the different i/o ports so you can learn about various protocols.

Statistics: Posted by limor — Mon Sep 04, 2006 9:39 pm

Glossary for dummies like me?

2006-09-04T20:33:27+01:00

Hello Zembot,

To help you out a little, DOF means degrees of freedom (more is usually better ), PWM is pulse width modulation, LIN (I am not sure where you got this one) but it may be referring to the LIN bus, and thus stands for local interconnect network. And the CAN is the CANBUS, which means controller area network.

Hope that helps.

Statistics: Posted by hivemind — Mon Sep 04, 2006 8:33 pm

Glossary for dummies like me?

2006-09-04T20:22:13+01:00

Zembot Hi
I have been involved only since march and think i have made far progress with a few mods etc learning as i go with fantastic help and support from all the guys here on Robosavvy. I have just found on eBay a Book i hope will help me in the same way.It's called "Robot Building For Dummies" i am yet to receive it but thought the info might be of some help to you.

welcome aboard and enjoy you Bot. RN-1 ?

Statistics: Posted by rep001 — Mon Sep 04, 2006 8:22 pm

Glossary for dummies like me?

2006-09-04T19:31:36+01:00

Is there a glossary of acronyms for newbs like me? I’m constantly finding myself wondering… what is a DOF, PWM, LIN, CAN, etc. etc.? Being this is my first stab at robots, sometimes I find the terminology a little overwhelming.

I’m getting to the point where I’d like to try some mods. Yet I realize before I can attempt modding the RN, I’ll need better understanding of the lingo. Maybe I’ve overlooked an obvious link? It’s embarrassing to admit, what I need is a “RoboNova for dummies” book.

Thanks again,
Zembot

Statistics: Posted by Zembot — Mon Sep 04, 2006 7:31 pm