Robotic kits ?

The

BOE Bot is always a good choice. They have tons of documentation that can't be beat. You can also go with a robot chassis kit (the Scooterbot is excellent) and get your own microcontroller PCB kit form a number of other sources. Goes great with a Parallax BOE board too. The Scooterbot would work well in a classroom as it is easy to assemble and disassemble, and so on. The people have the MarkIII robot, which is good too, it works for many other things besides Mini-Sumo. If your wanting one computer board for all sorts of robots, no matter how complicated, the ISOPOD is the one to get.. You can't outgrow the chip. It has just about all the features needed, all built in already.

I can recommend Gordon's kits;

I have an Antares which is a neat little base - much more solid than I expected. It feels like it could easily handle a tumble down the stairs and survive unscathed. Not that that's happened, no sir, my algorithms always maintain complete control at all times *cough*.

I also snagged a couple of Scooterbots for my kids for Christmas and they (we) had a ball building them.

-Brian

-- Brian Dean, snipped-for-privacy@bdmicro.com BDMICRO - Maker of the MAVRIC ATmega128 Dev Board

I have to second this recomendaion. The kits at Budget Robotics are of high quality and at a very reasonable price.

Another source of bases is Polydroids:

I have their treaded base, and it has worked fine for me.

And then you can always convert an R/C toy. I got a 1/6th scale R/C tank from Walmart, and it has a *lot* of space.

-- D. Jay Newman