Advancing the hobby...

When I was little I had a Tandy/Radio Shack kit like this type of thing:

and it was lots of fun because of the number of diverse things you could do with it. Now I'm older, the near-equivalent for me is a few boxes of Rs, Cs,

transistors and ICs and some boards (either those white breadboards, or stripboard, SMD boards, etc).

However, since you're interested in robotics, how about a Parallax Boe-Bot? It comes with a little breadboard, some components so that you can experiment, sensors, a microcontroller (maybe replace that with the one of your choice), a couple of motors, chassis etc. For more advanced stuff, you could add another breadboard or additional circuit/sensors of your own design on top. The Boe-Bot would eat half the budget though, it's not cheap. Otherwise, robotics might be tricky unless you have access to some metalwork tools, etc. If you do, then you could certainly save costs. Perhaps using a toy as a chassis might be a fun alternative. Or, use Tamiya hobby bits to assemble a chassis (probably not cheap either).

Others might have better suggestions.

I (still) have that exact same 150-in-1 kit!

I was looking at the variety of robotic resources out there, and was surprised how much variety there was out there, from $20 motorized platforms to platforms in excess of $45,000! Of course, I'm looking somewhere "in-between" those extremes.

I saw this: http://www.robotshop.com/dfrobotshop-rover-v2-autonomous-2.html

...which seems to be a vesratile all-in-one platform with a fair amount of extensibility. Then again, there are also "core parts" kits (like http://www.robotshop.com/ez-robot-complete-kit-3.html) which can be used to convert existing roving platforms (R/C cars, maybe) into robotic systems. I already own both a Spykee and Rovio robot system, but I've always considered them "self-contained." With the core parts kit above, I might be able to repurpose those.

So many ideas, so little resources to invest. I do appreciate your input. I haven't thought about simply machining my own platform. I have resources for doing that if I decide to do so. I also have several larger, hi-torque, stepper motors which could be driven by an Arduino and an h-bridge for use on a larger homemade base.

Thanks!

VintageVolts wrote:

 

... I'd like to have as much versatility as I can...

For mind-boggling versatility, I'd suggest a cheap FPGA board such as the XESS XULA-200, now $55 in the USA.  Kind of like wiring up 74XX logic, except that the logic elements and wires are inside the FPGA and the Xilinx XC3S200A on the XULA-200 has the equivalent of 200K gates.

Here's a nice review of the module: http://www.element14.com/community/groups/fpga-group/blog/2011/09/02/review-of-xula-200a-from-xess-fpga

Here's the XESS web site: http://www.xess.com/catalog.php

I haven't tried the XESS board myself (other things I need to get working first) but I've used the Xilinx XC3S200A a lot and it's a great FPGA family.  There's a good group of engineers who eagerly chime in at the FPGA group here at element14 whenever people have questions and/or comments: http://www.element14.com/community/groups/fpga-group

If you're in the UK or elsewhere in Europe, there's a guy working on an XC3S200A board that plugs into Raspberry Pi: http://www.astro-designs.com/page14.php

For other cheap FPGA boards, check out: http://tristesse.org/FPGA/CheapFPGADevelopmentBoards

That's not a bad price for a useable FPGA board. I'll need to put that on my list of boards I'll want to try out someday. I currently have a 250K Papilio board which I didn't get a chance to look into. I have wrap my head around FPGA concepts a little more before I can do anything really useful with it. I know enough to be "dangerous", but it's still just basically tinkering around. I'm one of those people who learn a certain technology better when there's an end goal. I'll need to come up with a good project idea which may best be realized using FPGA technology before I can expect to comprehend and understand the technology and processes underlying it.

I've made a decision on what I wanted to add to my hobby resources.

One commonly overlooked set of items that made my list was "wires." Jumper wires (for breadboarding) and test leads (for signal tracing/injecting/measuring) topped the list. I realized that I was lacking in a sufficient quantity of such wiring. What good is designing circuits if you can't conveniently connect the parts together!

I also invested in a rework station. Nothing fancy, but it's more than I have right now (a plain soldering station). I want to (any will probably need to) start working with SMD components. Might as well get what I need to work with the stuff now.

I plan on experimenting with old and new technologies, from old 8-bit microprocessor based devices, to newer PIC, AVR, flash based devices, etc. For that, I picked up a universal programmer which is capable of writing data to those items, such as PIC chips, 27xx EPROMS, etc. It'll even allow me to go through drawers full of 74xx chips and test each one for functionality. Should be an easy way for me to weed out the bad ones.

Oh... and I did snag some of my budget to buy something "for me." I like playing flight simulator games, so I decided to buy a flight yoke.

I thank everybody for their help!