Re: Serial Infrared Tower

Hi List,

Thanks to the many who replied with ideas and offers of a tower for
sale.  I eventally bought one, although not in time for the robot
competition where I needed it.

Thanks for the tips to look at http://www.bricklink.com/ and
http://www.pldstore.com/

As for making my own - some day, perhaps.

> If you have a free PCMCIA slot you may want to get a PCMCIA to USB adapter
> that can support multiple peripherals for a song.

I actually tried to do this - I went to a local electronics store and
they had lots of USB adapters.  However, they were CARDBUS adapters, not
PCMCIA, and my older laptop (IBM Thinkpad P-150) only has PCMCIA.  I saw
two USB PCMCIA adapters for auction on e-bay (going for about $35 or
more), but I could just as easily get a serial tower for less and in the
same amount of time.  I also wanted to keep the USB tower on the desktop
machine in my son's room.

So we entered in the robot rally without a tower, but I brought the
laptop anyway.  Thirty minutes prior to the start of the competition,
the bot fell off a table and lost all programming.  I borrowed a serial
tower from another hobbyist, installed mindstorm software, and rewrote
the programming.  The results of the competition for "Smasher" in the
Mini-Sumo and Open-Contest (line follower) can be found at:
http://www.botlanta.org/rally2003/index.html

Best Regards,

Steve
--
Did you check the web site first?: http://www.crynwr.com/lego-robotics