BalanceBot

I decided on a new project while at circuit hacking night at Artifactory last night. In my head it looks something like an unmanned segway…

For the controller I’ll be using an Arduino Duemilanove that I already have, and the accelerometer will be an ADXL345 3 axis accelerometer with a SPI/I2C digital interface. It seemed less than elegant to me to use an accelerometer with analog outputs as a digital signal would need to go through a D/A converter before travelling through a length of hookup wire then through an A/D converter where it can finally be used by my program in the Arduino.

So my first step is going to be getting data from the accelerometer to the Arduino, and not knowing the first thing about SPI or I2C is going to make this a steep learning curve!

I’ve created a BalanceBot library in Eagle and created an ADXL345 device. This should allow me to not only create a schematic for bread boarding but a PCB later if I’m so inclined.