what in the world is it with so many on instructables using the word "ghetto"? none of you come from the ghetto, why not just use suburban or trailer park or chinatown? use your own culture if you want to describe something as cheap, dirty, tacky or nasty.
I'm betting you didn't even come from the "original ghetto", which was imported from Germany during world war II. So why do you give a crap. In the common English vernacular, ghetto (as applied to objects) is used to describe something that is not right. "cheap, dirty, tacky or nasty" are implied connotations. The way Ghetto is used nowadays is not even accurate. The word ghetto is from the Italian borghetto which literally means a little cluster of houses. My point to all this is, you need to stop looking to find problems with other people, because you will always find problems (nobody is perfect). In the end all this will do is make you bitter, angry, and miserable. In addition, nobody will want to hangout with you, unless they too are angry bitter and miserable. It's a vicious cycle and you are the only one who can break it. Instead try: 'hey nice trick, thanks for showing me that'.
Motors: 2 x $10 = $20. Mega8: $3.50 at Solarbotics, $3.66 at Digikey, $4.93 at Sparkfun Chunk of 3mm Sintra: $0.50? ($3 / 8"x12" sheet from Solarbotics.) Thick copper wire: $0.50? (bought from surplus store years ago)
= $25 in round numbers.
(As with most robot projects) the big expense is the motors. If you've got any source of cheap geared motors, use 'em. Servos aren't necessary, but I wanted to learn how to run them. If you get bored of this bot and want to re-use them, they un-bolt easily.
The Mega8 was overkill b/c I never ended up adding the complex sensor system I was envisioning. You could get away with anything as small as a Tiny13, probably.
Sintra is great, but any kind of stiff frame material should be fine -- scrap PCB fibreglass board, foam-core, etc.
Thanks for the welcome, and thanks for Instructables! I figured I've taken so much from here already, it was time to give back a couple at least. Elliot.
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