Customer Reviews

Programming Robot Controllers

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This guy should stick to writing about microcontrollers because there isn't much about robotics in this book!! For example: by the time you get to page 170 the project is how to flash an LED - dear god help me - I buy a book about robotics and he's got 170 pages of filler leading up to what? To flash an LED??? The C code is junior at best - obfuscated spaghetti code and his patronizing egotistical comments drive us crazy. And again, I just love all of the author written drivel reviews with 5 stars - predkos cramped writting style is recognizable anywhere. BTW by the time you get to page 358 he talks about neural nets and the only single line of code he has to offer as an example is this: Outputs = f(Inputs); you gotta be kidding me!!

Myke focuses on interfacing sensors to PIC's. His focus lies primarily on the PIC16F627/84. This book has been instrumental in helping me quickly interface my robots sensors, and specially test them quickly. I am a software programmer so it made my life easier. The CD which accompanies it contains the book's code examples, a great interactive interface, PIC tools (compilers, etc.), documentation, and more. I am impressed with Myke's work so far. Thanks Myke.

Much of the book has little to actually do with building a robot. Or even interfacing a controller into a system. Much of the book takes you through using a LCD. Little is done with inputs from sensors or controlling motors. Although it is a good tool to learn C for the PIC. It's not the best for using with robotics.

Myke Predko is one of my favorite authors. There are a lot of beginners baffled and confused with the information presented, because his books are not written for the inexperienced, although beginners will benefit greatly from the information presented. He will take complex subject matter and condense it down into a few pages. He will simplify complex topics in such a way that it will save you hundreds of hours of time searching through large numbers of other books trying to get a grasp on complex subject matter normally covered through many pages and many chapters of Engineering text. His writing is a short cut to success. He has made my career possible, during difficult times, when jobs were in short supply. His knowledge in part has become my knowledge, and it has provided for me valuable career opportunities that I otherwise would not have had. I will be forever grateful for all the shared wealth of information provided in his books. Most people with this kind of guru knowledge are not willing to share there secrets with the rest of us. Myke Predko shares freely his vast amount of practical knowledge and experience, through his books, which are very reasonably priced, much lower than you would normally expect to pay for a college textbook, and his books are at least 10 to 100 times more valuable.

When I first heared about the book, I was like whoa , it has everything I've been trying to learn.I had a background on programming PIC's using assembly ,so I liked the idea of learning C for PIC's and building a robot...But honestly,this book made me sick and frustrated from robotics because i wasted lot of money on this book and the other two books in this series (ROBOT DNA series)

Chapter 1"Microcontrollers in Robotics" : This chapter is the worst.It has random information that's useless for both beginners and experts like block diagrams from pic16f84 datasheet and long paragraphs on types and shapes of batteries.

Chapter 2 "Software Development" : When I started to read the book,I was like chapter 1 is bad because it might be just an introduction or something ...but guess what, the whole book is like chapter 1!!! random information on everything,the author attempts to discuss the following topics in this chapter:
source files,object files,libraries,linkers,hex files,assemblers,compilers,interpreters,simulators and emulators!!(ie. topics that you would need tons of books to understand them)

Chapter 3 The Microchip PICmicro Microcontroller: This chapter is nothing but copy/paste of pic's datasheets plus more random information about different topics ...oh yeah and a circuit of a programmer that you can get from the internet for free.

Chapter 4 : this chapter has some circuits and code that you can easily find in google, like how to interface the pic with LCD using two wires..etc ...
Chapter 5 and 6 : more long and useless articles on hard topics.

I think that Myke was trying to include everything he knows about in this book...so we ended up with a book that's impossible to understand by hobbyists and beginners,and useless for experts and engineers..for example, if i want to learn about interpreters,compilers ,batteries, i wouldn't buy a robotics or a PICmicro book!

This book has been a real help with my PIC based robot project. While I had microcontroller background, I had no experience with PIC's. The books focus is small robots using the PIC16F627 programmed in C. There are no assembly code examples, but the C code is well written and serves as a good model for translation to assembly. I have found that much of the content is scalable to my larger project (and a different PIC processor). There is no substitute for data sheets and app notes for essential knowledge about the PIC family, but this book provides a valuable jump start. I particularly found the discussion of software development tools (for PIC) to be useful. There are lots of useful PIC interface examples in chapter 4 (Microcontroller Connections). I liked the appendices (a little bit of everything) and found few errors in the book - an important feature for me. If I find too many technical errors, I will toss an otherwise useful book (good editing, whoever did it). I also found the author to be helpful in answering questions via email. Thanks, Myke.

Hello, i had this book for quite some time now.
The title is very good, you buy it expeting to have a good sense of what controller programming for robots (the title) should be only to find your self with a lot of unnecessary (in my opinion) "stuff".

In his introduction there is a part named "Prerequisites for this book", let me comment on that because í think it's very important.

"Programming Robot Controllers was written for robot developers with some experience in developing robots. I will not be going into detail explaing basic programming, electronics, or PC operation, but you will have to be familiar with these areas of study".

He's right, his code is written in C, so if you are still to learn Basic or C, you should go elsewhere.

The code provided in his book is somehow simple and very understandable (again, you need to have some programming background).

Chapter 1, chapter 2 and most of chapter 3 are a good reference of what a µicrochip PIC is, what is a compiler, and information regarding the latters subjects.

The end of chapter 3 is a good, quick lesson on how to build an inexpensive programmer "El Chepo" (El barato, this i like since i'm from México).

Chapter 4 is about how the microcontroller works, conneting it to the world.
In this chapter he gives situation-code examples, very simple codes that you can get better explained (on Karl Williams books, or Gordon McComB's master piece) elsewhere.

The one approach of programming that i really like was the one about odometry (chapter 4, page 307-313). Here he explains the problem with turns on robots and how you should compensate for them.

On Chapter 5 the explains and gives examples on how the whole code works together.

The rest can easily be left out of the book (pages 360-456).

The book is good if you are not sure how some taks are done (on Pic's µicros) and my overall "feeling" of is:
You don't get what you might expect; i was thinking i might get some flow diagrams, no flow diagrams. But i did get some information that i use (the odometry lesson).

It maybe good or bad, i can only say that i found better "Programming" on "Build you own combat Robot" by Pete miles, the books by Karl Williams and even from Gordon McComb, they have programs written in basic but you can adopt them to assambler or C, because the code is simple and they provide flow charts.

Well, there it is.

Mario Alberto Camarillo Ramos

Excellent book, I would dare say that this is certainly better than his previous books on Pic. As bculver13 says he focuses mainly on the PIC16F627/84. The only issue that I have with this book is the fact that most example code are in C language instead of Basic. I am impress with the info in the book, its basically everything you can possibly find about Pic on the net. What's better is that he actually EXPLAINS it~!! making my life a whole lot easier...

To my way of thinking, there was a lot of informatiom, and references to Data sheets, with little more actual information that a first year student in electronics should know. This is just ny opoinion, and may be wrong, but it was what it looked like it to me. You may get more out of it. This is not a total slam, as there is some good basic info here.

The first two books in the "Robot DNA" series are rehashes of well worn subjects but Predko's book is a really good treatment on a subject that hasn't been looked at before in any kind of depth: how the robot controller itself is programmed and interfaced with sensors and motors. After working through the book, you will be able to design code that will work with (and integrate!) light sensors, mechanical whiskers, IR object sensors, RC servos, DC motors and more. Each interface is very well explained and Predko goes into depth into integrating multiple functions together (even going so far as showing how to make some simple robots for testing out ideas).

Being a hobbyist, what I really appreciated was how Proedko wrote his examples in common "C" and then provided actual example programs using A FREE C COMPILER instead of a product that could cost hundreds of dollars (or more). The examples are written for a cheap PIC microcontroller and Predko shows how you can get started for just a few bucks.

Again, nicely done and somethign different for the series instead of the McCombs, Owings and Clark offerings which just rehashes information that is found in many other books.

Ray Blome