tips for securing a laptop on a mobile platform?

You want to visit Home Depot and look for something you can use as an L-
or U-bracket, with an opening large enough for the laptop. Line it it
with some rubber (weatherstripping is nice) to prevent marring the
chassis of the laptop. Look in the bathroom fixtures department for
mirror brackets and other assorted hardware that you can use as
hold-downs. BR has some lightweight plastic brackets you can use to make
your own L or U, but you can use the zinc-plated metal ones at the
hardware store.

The better approach, of course, is to just screw the thing to the
plastic panel and go out and buy a Mac with an Intel chip in it. Then
you can run Windows like the rest of us! <g>

-- Gordon

I am also thinking about attaching a laptop to my Roomba floor sweeper.
 However, I am concerned about the hard drive getting jolted around as
the wheels go over irregularities in the floor and door thresholds.
Another concern is that I don't want the display to have to take all
the forces on its hinge.

The pictures I've seen of other robots with laptops don't seem to have
any shock-absorbing mounts for the laptops.  So, perhaps I am just
overly concerned.

At https://www.zagrosrobotics.com  they have a few different bases
designed for Laptops.  But, I don't see anything special to hold the
laptop down, or for shock absorbing.

It may be that just the bolts for the wheels help to trap the laptop to
keep it from sliding off, and that the mass of the robot and its
battery provide enough "inertial dampening" to reduce the shock load on
the laptop.

Joe Dunfee

I don't worry too much about the hinge -- it's made of titanium, and the
floor in my house is pretty smooth even where it transitions from carpet
to hardwood.  The hard drive is another issue, though.  I may try to
write my code in such a way that it doesn't need to be using the hard
drive in normal operation.  Though with Unix, it's hard to prevent that
completely, as there are always a number of other processes going on in
the background.

I think I've decided that I'm comfortable putting self-adhesive velcro
strips on the bottom side of this laptop.  I'll put the soft side on the
laptop, of course, with the prickly side on the robot base.  These will
actually provide a small bit of shock absorption too, though admittedly
not very much.

Long-term, I'll probably end up asking myself why I'm using a laptop at
all, and may replace it with a combination of embedded controllers (e.g.
Gumstix) and dedicated I/O boards (e.g. for speech recognition and
synthesis).  But short-term, this is definitely the easiest way for me
to go, and I'm excited to see what we can do with it.

Cheers,
- Joe

I've decided to go with a Wifi module on the robot, and my laptop sitting
safely on a desk running the brains.

Later,
Jon

--------------------------------------------------------------
   Jon Hylands      Jon@huv.com      http://www.huv.com/jon

  Project: Micro Seeker (Micro Autonomous Underwater Vehicle)
           http://www.huv.com

Yeah, I thought about that, but I'd be giving up my Firewire video
camera (which I have no desire to replace with a wireless one), speech
recognition and synthesis (on the bot of course, not on the desk in the
next room), and the interesting things I can do with a display (such as
giving my robot an animated face).

Not that I couldn't eventually provide all those same functions in other
ways -- but it'd be both harder and more expensive, given the equipment
I have to work with at the moment.

I'll try to do a better job of documenting this bot as I go, so the
curious can follow its progress.

Best,
- Joe

I've started a blog for mine: http://www.huv.com/blog

Later,
Jon

--------------------------------------------------------------
   Jon Hylands      Jon@huv.com      http://www.huv.com/jon

  Project: Micro Raptor (Small Biped Velociraptor Robot)
           http://www.huv.com/blog

Me too (http://www.strout.net/info/robotics/log.html ), I just haven't
been as good as I should about keeping it up.

Best,
- Joe

I really like your "Giant House Eyes" idea!  I'll have to try something
similar next Halloween!

--
Curt Welch                                            http://CurtWelch.Com/
curt@kcwc.com                                        http://NewsReader.Com/

First off, regards the other msg, I would bet the roombavac doesn't
have enough motor power to lug around a 6# notebook PC. BTW, you will
notice a new book was just released in Nov 2006 about Hacking Roomba,
by Tod Kurt. For my part, I would put zigbee on the roomba and command
it from my desktop PC. The roomba platform will also no doubt be
limited regards how much weight in general, sensors, etc, you can add
to it and still maintain adequate drive.

Regards mounting your notebook on the RAD, that platform should have
plenty of motor power, so long as you remove the upper body - like I
did with my RAD hack.

http://www.oricomtech.com/projects/rad-hack.htm

However, the hard tracked-treads on the RAD base mean the base bounces
quite a bit on hard floors, like kitchen linoleum. I would only even
think about mounting my notebook PC on the RAD base via using 2" thick
foam as a shock absorber. Save the hard disk.

Right, and in fact I'm going further and removing the upper shell on the
lower body as well.  (I'll try to post some pictures soon.)


Hmm... an interesting point.  I'm planning to keep it in low gear, which
may help some.  I might also try putting on some acceleration sensors,
and having it slow down when it starts to bounce around.  (Unfortunately
this is not one of those newer Powerbooks with acceleration sensors
built in.)  I'll also look a little harder for some way to reliably park
the hard drive.  Meanwhile, I can keep it on carpeted areas.  Thanks for
the warning!

Best,
- Joe

The RAD base actually bounces more when in low gear. I think because
the torque is much greater that the treads dig in harder. Try starting
your car moving off in 4th gear instead of 1st gear.