Children of the 80s may remember the Big Trak, a six-wheeled programmable toy designed to explore distant planets on the other side of the living room and the vast expanse of a two-car garage. The Big Trak was re-released a few years ago and [Nathan] took quite a shine to this improved version. He was so enthralled he decided to upgrade it even more to support the LOGO programming language.
The 30-year-old version of the Big Trak had a membrane keypad where commands such as ‘drive forward 5 units’ and ‘turn 90 degrees’ can be saved and run from memory. This is very similar to the LOGO programming language with and turtle graphics and nearly identical to the Roamer LOGO robot.
To control the Big Trak, [Nathan] upgraded the electronics to a ChipKit Uno and a BeagleBone. A LOGO interpreter written in Python and uploaded to the BeagleBone. After this, [Nathan] was nearly set. He did add a WiFi interface to control his Big Trak wirelessly, a nice touch we think.
You can check out [Nathan]’s twenty-minute build video where he goes through the entire process of upgrading his Big Trak after the break.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQwtnZ-aMNA&w=470]
Could have sworn it said Big Tank
Not that I’m complaining, this is total overkill. It’s so much overkill in fact, that it overflows and becomes under kill.
+1 on the nerdy humour :)
I like it, and I don’t care if it’s overkill. Looks like fun. Now I wish they would bring back the Mobile Armatron.
“A LOGO interpreter written in Python”
Yo dawg, I heard you like interpreters…
Cool, better than anything I’ve done and will probably ever do, but inefficiencies like that bug me. Unless the Python was compiled and not interpreted itself…
I have a Big Track from back in the day that my uncle gave me – MCU control seems like an awesome way to bring it back.
Now to what I don’t like – it’s WAY too obvious what all is in there. Also, why LOGO? What does it have that C/C++ on a normal MCU doesn’t have? Seems like a huge waste of resources.
Why LOGO? Off the top of my head: easy of programming basic movement. LOGO was born for it. Given the embarrassment of resources on the Beagleboard (which I’ll guess he already had on him), there’s no need to skimp.
It’s not actually running Logo, it’s just using the same syntax as the main turtle movement commands.
I have an original Big Trak, with dump trailer…
The Logo mention gave me an idea.. How about an etch-a-sketch interface to the big track? Draw the path on the EAS, then hit a button to engage and follow the course. There should be some sort of scale function to convert the course into the desired distance.
Of course it wouldn’t need to be an EAS, but that arcane interface is somehow appealing. Especially if the course leads to a beer fridge.
Cool idea. Take a photo of the EAS design, and feed it into converter program, telling it the scale to use. That would be neat!
The photo would definitely be the easiet way…
Though I find the thought of controlling the motion in realtime, with x/y knobs really appealing.. And I suppose that would be very different from the original mode, which is creating a programming and running it. Hmpf. Obviously a mere remote control interface is not such a big deal, don’t know why I’m so into the EAS interface.
Another idea is driving an EAS with servos to give an analog picture of the BT’s path and location.
Screw the Kinect, bring back the etch a sketch! ;-)
While using LOGO on Python seems a bit out there, it plucks a nostalgic string in me.
For a comparative computer languages class, I selected LOGO, and bought ExperLogo to run on a Mac SE/X. It was easy to learn, fun to code with. But, the interpreter wasn’t set up to give the user access to the Macintosh Toolbox, so it languished on the shelf at the conclusion of my project. I may still have the floppy.
Still got one of the originals on a self in my garage. Oh, and I seem to recall Steve Ciarcia (of Circuit Cellar fame) doing a near-identical mod to this one about 25 years ago, described in Byte magazine. Funny old world.
My birthday was Nov last year. LOVE the BigTrak Jr my girlfriend got me.
However, when she gave it to me, I had to promise I wasn’t going to pull it apart.
Back to the R/C cars I go!
LOGO! All my childhood! We had a robotic logo turtle in our IT room at my school, it made me start programming as a school activity, when I was six years old.
Then a few years later my father gave me his Atari 1040ST. Used and abused LOGO for years! I think my code could only be a couple of hundred lines… fun times!
Then moved on to C, PHP, Java and .NET.
21 years later, I make a living of coding. LOGO is a great language to make kids understand what programming is.
Oh, man does this take me back. Never would have thought of it. Loved the BigTrak as a kid (had one of the originals) bought one of the BigTrak Jr’s for my son last Christmas….AND I had to write a logo interpreter in my CompSci 300 level assembly language programming class…
This post was made for me! thanks!
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Tink-Trak/667792536622039?ref=hl
My Big Trak has the trailer accessory. But I recall it as being grey, not white. Time to go look. Yep, it’s grey, and it has treads (tracks, hence the name). And more decals…
This color:
https://youtu.be/bc_MKVuji88
Looks like the white version is the Big Trak Jr.
https://m.mygeekbox.us/gift-retro/can-holder-for-bigtrak-and-bigtrak-junior/10491969.html