Pimp My Hexbug!

What is a Hexbug you ask ? Well, a Hexbug is a line of micro robotic creatures! Sounds fancy doesn't it ? actually it's quite boring, if you ask me, for example, mine just walks around until it hits something and then it turns around and that's basically just about it!

That's why I've decided to reuse the mechanical parts and boost the bug a bit.  So I designed a small wireless board to control my Hexbug. This is the modified Hexbug, I call it nrfbug

Now let's get down to the glorious details...

Wireless Link

For the wireless link I used the nRF24L01+ chip from Nordic. This chip is by far the most amazing VLSI chip that I have ever seen, it certainly deserves it's own post, however briefly, the nRF24L01+ chip is a 2.4Ghz wireless chip that implements a packet-based low level datalink layer protocol (similar to Ethernet) with dynamic payload length, auto-retransmission, auto-ack, CRC, FIFOs,  multiple transmitters, multiple receivers (broadcast). Newer chips even has an integrated USB controller, an improved 8051 core and an AES engine! it's just amazing!

I wrote a library for this chip, originally wrote it for the LPC1768, it's still a work in progress, but it does the job, link in downloads section.

Processing

For the MCU I used an atmega328 running on the internal RC oscillator at 8Mhz, the board has the SPI interface broken out to the header, it's not really compatible with any programmer, that I know of, I just use avrdude and an FTDI chip to bitbang the ihex file to flash.

Motor

On board is an H-bridge to control the motor direction, when the current flows in one direction the nrfbug moves both sets of legs, when it moves in the other direction it moves just one causing it to rotate. The bridge has fly-back diodes for protection. The h-bridge is controlled with two GPIO pins on the MCU.

Sensors

While I was at it, I throw in an SMD ambient light sensor. The sensor is quite simple, it's basically just a light-sensitive transistor that is read by the ADC.

Control

At the other end, I use an mbed to send commands to the bug. Connected to  the mbed is another Nordic chip and a joystick connected to the ADC to move the bug around.

Board

The nrfbug board was designed using Eagle and fabricated at BatchPCB.  The first board had a small problem with the chip antenna having ground pours beneath it, according the datasheet it shouldn't! that's the bless of reading the datasheet after you finish your project :), it only affects the range though (and maybe cause more packets to drop), anyway, I fixed it and waiting for the new revision. The new Eagle files are available in the downloads.

nrfbug
Finally, the bug in action

Downloads

nRF24L01p avr library

hg clone https://code.google.com/p/nrf24l01p

nrfbug Eagle files

hg clone https://code.google.com/p/nrfbug