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Requesting project ideas! Answered

Hi, I have a Sanguino (basically a more powerful Arduino), an old laptop, an old cordless phone, an old remote control, a couple of old mobile phones and a couple of radio controlled toys. All of these can be scavenged for parts. Can anyone give me good electronics / robotics project ideas that I can try out. I am a computer science guy by training and profession and though need a refresher on electronics, I can basically get to a pretty complex project once I dirty my hands on a couple of basic ones to refresh myself. Thanks, Sushrut.


Common first projects in robotics are line-following robots, and robots that move towards or away from the sun. They have been covered extensively elsewhere. You may need to purchase some inexpensive sensors... or use buttons as simple tactile feedback for the thing. Remember to keep it modular because you will want to be able to reuse the parts for later projects.

I've even seen one that locates the nearest thing and crashes into it at full speed, then picks a new thing.

Giving kids access to experimental, high powered robots has not historically been my first choice in these matters. I'm not a big fan of the terrible accidents.

Basically a sanguino is a fancy IO device, right? Why not combine your kit to make a RC cart for a physically-disabled kid,as the IO can accept the kid's input and relay that to the remote and thence to the RC device - or even a Robot Wars type machine so that the kid could go bash things and be 'normal' (whatever that means) for a while. If you wanted to go more fancy maybe a tractor-driven snow cart that a kid could sit on? With your list of parts, it felt like Ready Steady Cook! Good luck.