Micro Controller Outputs for Robot: Find Solutions Here

[Jones1987]

Hi,

I'm looking at controlling about 14-16 different outputs, 2 DC motors, 12 Infra Red scanners and 1 Ultrasound component on a robot. I assumed I would have to build a circuit board from scratch, but I have discovered you can implement a MC instead.

But, are there such pieces of hardware that allow me to hook up these amount of outputs? I've seen 8 I/O boards? But I obviously need more. So are there such components out there which consist of more ports, or is this a case of using more than 1 board.

http://www.active-robots.com/products/controllr/solarbotics-microcontroller.shtml First one, will something like this be a suitable candidate?

Be gentle, this is my first experience with electronics :D

 

[Fish4Fun]

http://www.sparkfun.com/products/36

Is just ONE example.

The Arduino series has a lot of plug-n-play options and is fairly popular.

There are TONs of Break-Out PCBs as well as development boards for most of the "popular" uControllers. Decide exactly how many I/O pins you need and what type of interface requirements; then settle on the uController, or at least a uController Family; from there, search for a PCB board or development kit. If you really want to get fancy you could use an FPGA development board and simply synthesize the uController ;-) hehe. I would stick with a uController in the AVR family, PIC family or an 8051 variant; pretty much in that order.

Fish