Robot Building for Beginners by David Cook
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Book Reviews of Robot Building for Beginners
Book Review: Create a simple robot and lay down the foundations for future ones
Summary: 4 Stars
I am providing this feedback in the hope of guiding potential buyer's expectations about the goals of this book. After going through this book you will have:
1. a simple reflex robot (reflex in the sense that it reacts "naively' to detection of light). This is neither good nor bad, again it depends on your expectations. No coding will be involved and the robot cannot do much else
2. you will learn Ohms law and how it is applied in building this robot's circuit
3. you will learn about basic building blocks and how they work, diodes, resistors, comparators, photoresistors, etc
4. you will accumulate a collection of tools and materials that you can reuse
5. you will learn how to do soldering and machining of some parts
In my opinion this is a book for the long haul. If you want to get up and running really fast the author himself suggest going the Lego route or with other kits that you assemble together quickly. If you want to learn the basic principles and collect the necessary tools to build parts and/or whole robots it is a good place to start. Bare in mind it is a START. If you are serious about robot building you will ultimately gravitate in building parts and circuits based on skills and knowledge the author describes. The book takes you through a lot of basic skills and knowledge and it has a lot of illustrations, actually multiple per step, which I found invaluable.
So no fancy, intelligent robot here, just laying some serious foundations. Make sure that you visit the author's website and you look for the "sandwich" the robot being built. It will give you a lot of helpful information such as a shopping list for all the tools, components needed. One big concern is the cost involved. When all the tools and materials are purchased, we are talking about several hundred dollars. Yes most of them will be for materials and tools that you will use in other projects, if you are seriously committed in sticking with this as a hobby. If you are not, take the Lego or other kit route.
I hope this helps and I personally found quite rewarding being able to build the different parts myself and the robot. I already have David's intermediate book and I look forward to the next level of complexity.
Book Review: Awesome for Beginners!
Summary: 4 Stars
This book is perfect for high schools and introductory college courses. Every educator should take a serious look at including this in his or her curriculum. It would make a fine summer course as well. Lab materials for building the complete robot would run under $100 per student, less when purchased in bulk. Or, since the experiments are laid out on reusable solderless breadboards, the subject could still be effectively taught at a lower cost. A wonderful way to get more students on the path to science and engineering. Highly recommended.Book Review: Robot Building
Summary: 4 Stars
I was surprised when my 11 year old started reading the book and liked it. It may not be everyone's cup of tea, but if you have a budding mad scientist interested in robots, I would recommend the book. We got this book because we joined a robotics club. A teacher researched various books and decided this book was the best book for the club.Book Review: A better title...Basic Electronics with a Robot Example
Summary: 3 Stars
I don't dislike this book, but I don't find it all that useful in terms of robotic design. It does have good coverage of very basic electronics for the beginner, with crystal clear photos to show you the ropes. Don't know how to use a multimeter or know what a resistor is? This book is for you. However, if you want to know how to control, say a servo, you only get a brief paragraph telling you what one is. The book seems to do a lot of that--telling you what something does, but not giving you enough information to do something with it. For most of the book, you get a sense that the author simply looked through an electronics catalog, selected some key parts, and wrote a brief discription of what kinds there are, and what they do. Along the way, he shows how you can use those parts to make a simple robot.
This would be a good book to accompany another more applications-based book (or online site) on electronics (e.g. Radio Shack's Forrest Mimms Enginner's Notebooks, Practical Electronics for Inventors, etc.).
In terms of robotics, unforunately, you get one simple example and that's it. Very frustrating for those who want to make something more than a simple sandwhich box that follows a line. (It's a clever little design, nevertheless).
With all bad things said, I do think the book has positives. It has many helpful hints for selecting parts, tips for prototyping, and is writen in a friendly, easy-to-read style.
For those who know nothing at all about electronics and aren't too interested in robots, but more interested in basic electronics--5 stars. For those who have more than rudimentary knowledge of electronics and looking for a variety of robots projects--1 star.
Book Review: Ok starter on electronics, but lacking on robot design
Summary: 3 Stars
This is a fairly good book, and probably worthwhile for true beginners in this area. However, as someone else mentioned, the book spends a bit too much time on basic electronics and not enough time on real life robots. There is only one simple robot discussed. The book is also lacking on schematics and left me with a sense that I knew this stuff before I started reading it. However, I have a bit of experience with electronics so my view may be tainted. For electronics, there are better books, for robots there are better books. In all, I'd say if you have learned basic electronics already, and simply want to learn more about robotics, this isn't the book for you. If you don't know anything about electronics, and simply want to see how to drive simple motors, and LEDs, and aren't so interested in the detailed electronics, this book may be for you.