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Robotics for Beginners?

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I'm not familiar enough with the Arduinos and Axons to state all the differences.
They both use AVR processors and have all the support on the board to program and run.
One of the biggest differences may be the connectors for attaching other devices.

--- Quote ---The only thing I could figure out from them is that they used Solidworks to design th
--- End quote ---
Solidworks is a 3D design program for mechanical parts (chassis, brackets, etc)
MPLAB is the IDE from Microchip for PIC processors. This means the Bot Club is using PICs and not AVRs for their robots.

I seems that the Arduino Starter Kit would be good for you. This isn't a Robot kit but you do need to learn about micro-controllers and this kit will do that. The Arduino board then can be later used for a robot.

Yeah, because my school's robotics team is run by the Department of Mechanical Engineering, so it is more mechanical based rather than electronic based (that is why they focused more on the mechanical aspects of the robot, that is, wheels, motors, hinges, its base, etc)

I need to do more readings on PIC and AVR. Haha.
will certainly do that in my semester break (My exam will start soon. haha)

Oh I see, so an Arduino kit is basically consisted of only a modify-able board but without the mechanical parts of a robot?

What about the other choices btw? VEX? BOE? qfix?
Are they not popular? Or are difficult to learn?

I think I will go with Arduino, as it seems that I'm more interested in the programming part rather than the mechanical part.
So even though the Arduino Starter Kit doesn't contain the parts that are required to build a robot, but I can still use the Arduino board to program a robot in the future right?

About the Axon thing, the only reason that I chose Arduino over Axon is that it seems that are more guides for Arduino rather than Axon, so it might be easier for me to learn Arduino (with an abundant of guides available in the internet)
Also Arduino seemed more popular than Axon, as I have heard Arduino lots of times in many different websites. While I haven't heard of Axon even once.

And for the sake of confirmation, I just saw my teacher today brought a machine with Arduino UNO board installed.
So it seems that my university is going to use Arduino in the later projects. (As this is the Introductory course, so we can only get our hands on the BASYS2 board, but I think in the more advanced courses, we will be dealing with different kinds of boards, one of which should be the Arduino board)

So. Final decision is, I'm going to get myself the Arduino Starter Kit for my Christmas gift (LOL my first electronic-related Christmas gift)
Do you have any input/objections/comments?

And thank you so much for replying! I really appreciate it!

I think you're making the right decision for your case.

The Axon is for robots, the Arduino is for... breadboards.  Thus, the Arduino is better suited for most 'makers', and thus it's going to be more widely used regardless of added effect of popularity.

In all likelihood, if you get addicted to the hobby, you'll end up with multiple MCU boards anyways :)

Have fun!...

Yep, the Arduino for you.
Also check at Adafruit and SparkFun for Arduino shields (boards that plug onto the Arduino ) and lots of other nifty sensors, gadgets, tutorials and ideas.


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