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Upgrading

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Upgrading

 
Upgrade Path
The Bilby robot has gone through several stages of development:

1. Way back in 1995 when the robot was introduced, it had a folded aluminum chassis, old stepper motors from 5 1/4 inch floppy disk drives, and one circuit board. A program running on a Personal Computer controlled the robot via a cable.
2. The following year a second smaller circuit board was added to introduce infra-red sensors in place of switches to detect the edges of the path.
3. A few years after that the robot was redesigned around a section of PVC down pipe, new stepper motors and a larger single circuit board, but the cable was still a problem.
4. In 2004 we commenced an upgrade program to add a PIC microcontroller (computer IC) onto the Bilby. Now programs are developed on a PC and 'downloaded' to the Bilby via a cable, but it runs without any connection to the PC.

Most schools have a Bilby at stage 3 of development, but if you have an older robot and would like to upgrade this can be accommodated.

The current offer is for schools to upgrade their Bilby to stage 4, at little or no cost to the school. This will allow their Bilby to participate in the newer 'Smarter Bilby' competition. Contact Mark Phythian to arrange an upgrade.

Upgrading the Bilby is fairly straight forward and can typically be completed by a teacher or supervised students within a few hours. A procedure for the upgrade is currently being drafted.
Watch this space.