Who am I?

Hello, my name is Allan. I am one of the newest DIY Robot enthusiasts. For a very long time I had wanted to build a robot. With crazy ideas like a smartphone brain or whatever, I was always stuck with the problem that I had no idea hoe to connect the motors, servos, and other drive mechanisms to the brain. Then one day I stumbled across the Raspberry Pi 2. Here was a brain that had easy access to GPIO. I could finally do it. Way back in the day I had gone to school for computer programming, so that part I could probably get my head around. The general GPIO looked pretty straight forward, so not long after I received my Pi, I began to mess with motors.

Some of it has been slow, as I wait for parts to ship to me. One thing I didn't want to do was start with a premade kit. My whole goal was to learn from the ground up. I may at some point start selling my own bare bones kits for the Pi, but they will be wires, controllers, maybe motors, and no PCBs. There are plenty of quality slap and code robots out there. Mine is as much about the hardware as the software.

A little bit more background about myself: I am a wargamer and terrain maker, wanna be carpenter, I missed programming, a father, and a freaking lunatic. Yeah, all great, but what does most of that have to do with robots? Well, as a wannabe carpenter and terrain maker, I have a large number of fabrication tools that allow me to put together some things more easily than your random shmoe. As a wargamer, I spend a lot of time with futuristic and fantastic models, and have some idea of how to make and modify them to add/keep that aesthetic. Being a father lets me play with toys, I mean, aide my children. It also gives me some access to broken bits. It will also explain another reason, beyond parts, why sometimes I am slow to post. And lunatic. Really, this is the big one. Who builds a robot to begin with. Who is a big enough klepto to have some of these things lying around. That is right, a off the ranch, looney.

For the future, I hope to be able to break down this(these?) project(s) to show how I did it. I am going to skip the learning of the Raspberry Pi, but I do recommend you start with LEDs, Buzzers, and the like. LEDs are the first step to understanding the code and GPIO. Buzzers, even more than LEDs, are great for showing the PWM. Buttons... well, I haven't used any on my robot yet, but... freakin' buttons!

Oh, and at some point, I will name my robot, but for now, I got nothing.

Look for another post soon, 'til then, happy playing.