Micromouse Specific

Building a Maze
How to build the actual maze to test your mouse.

Circuits and Circuit Design

OpAmps for Everyone
Covers standard opamp circuits, single supply design techniques, feedback and stability theory, sources of noise in opamps, instrumentation amplifiers, A/D interfacing, active filter design, and PCB layout techniques.
Op Amp Circuit Collection
Lots and lots of opamp circuits.
More Filter Design on a Budget
This application note from TI describes filter design from the standpoint of cost. Filter design techniques that require the fewest possible op amps and passive components are described. Six types of filters are described - low pass, high pass, narrow bandpass, wide bandpass, notch, and band reject.
New Driver ICs Optimize High-Speed Power MOSFET Switching Characteristics
Although touted as a high impedance, voltage controlled device, prospective users of Power MOSFETs soon learn that it takes high drive currents to achieve high speed switching. This paper describes the construction techniques which lead to the parasitic effects which normally limit FET performance, and discusses several approaches useful to improve switching speed.
Demystifying single-supply op-amp design
It may seem like a simple task to modify your op-amp design to work from a single voltage power supply, but the change in performance will surprise you. By Charles Kitchin, Analog Devices Inc -- EDN, 3/21/2002
Driving Loads with High Current
One of the most common tasks in designing and building robots is the interfacing of logic circuitry to high current loads such as motors, solenoids, or Nitinol wire. This article attempts to outline some common approaches to interfacing logic to these high-current loads.
H Bridge Motor Control Circuits
This page features H-Bridge circuits used for controlling direct current motors. Several designs are shown using both CMOS and Bi-Polar power devices.
H Bridge Motor Controller
This circuit drives small DC motors up to about 100 watts or 5 amps or 40 volts.
Motor Drivers
When there is a need for controlling the speed of a DC motor in an efficient manner (using Pulse Width Modulation), driver circuitry can be rather simple.
ST Microelectronics Motor Drivers
The VN(5)77xK and the VNHx(A)SP30 families include full-bridge DC motor drivers, implement a full set of standard protection features including thermal shutdown, current limitation, overvoltage and undervoltage, and also offer PWM capability. The VNHx(A)SP30 family comes in a MultiPowerSO-30 exposed-slug package, well tailored for high-power applications such as window lifts, seat-positioning, or sun-roof control.
Allegro Motor Drivers
Motor driver ICs for brush DC, brushless DC, and stepper motors.

Control Theory

Feedback Systems, An Introduction for Scientists and Engineers
Karl Johan Astrom, Richard M. Murray. This book provides an introduction to the mathematics needed to model, analyze, and design feedback systems. It is an ideal textbook for undergraduate and graduate students, and is indispensable for researchers seeking a self-contained reference on control theory.
Feedback Control of a Nonholonomic Car-like Robot
The subject of this chapter is the control problem for nonholonomic wheeled mobile robots moving on the plane, and in particular the use of feedback techniques for achieving a given motion task.
Control Theory
From Wikipedia. Gives overview of linear control systems.
PID without a PHD
PID stands for "proportional, integral, derivative." This article will tell you how to implement and tune a simple controller without getting into heavy mathematics and without requiring you to learn any control theory. The technique used to tune the controller is a tried and true method that can be applied to almost any control problem with success.

Microcontrollers and Embedded

Header board for LPC2148
LPC2148 16/32 bit ARM7TDMI-S with 512K Bytes Program Flash, 42K Bytes RAM, USB 2.0, RTC, 10 bit ADC 2.44 uS, 2x UARTs, 2x I2C, SPI, 2x 32bit TIMERS, 6x PWM, 8x CCR, 1x DAC, WDT, 5V tolerant I/O, up to 60MHz operation
Fixed Point Filter Code Generator
We provide an online tool that takes a Matlab coefficient file as input and will produce an ARM assembly file and header file as output. We also document the process of designing digital filters in Matlab using the Filter Design and Analysis tool, exporting the filter coefficients, and integrating the code into your project.
Arduino
Arduino is an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software. It's intended for artists, designers, hobbyists, and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments. Arduino boards are based on Atmel AVR microcontrollers.
Sparkfun tutorials
Covers basics of breadboarding, linear regulators, AVR tutorials, PIC tutorials.

PCB Layout and Assembly

Sparkfun PCB layout tutorials
End-to-end tutorial on how to design, lay out, and fabricate your own printed circuit board using EAGLE and BatchPCB.
EAGLE Layout Editor
Free PCB layout software.
BatchPCB.com
Low-cost PCB fabrication service from Sparkfun Electronics.

Programming

WinARM
Arm-gcc toolchain for Windows.
WinAVR
Avr-gcc toolchain for Windows.
CodeProject C/C++ Programming Articles
TONS of articles from the CodeProject on C/C++ programming covering every topic from pointers to design methodologies.
Dr. Dobb's Embedded Systems Articles
Articles covering a wide range of topics in embedded systems.
The C/C++ User's Journal Archives
Covering everything from printf to CUDA.
Rick Ord's CSE 30 links
Lots of great links to resources on C programming, makefiles, and computer architecture.
A Quick Tour of Compiling, Linking, Loading, and Handling Libraries on Unix
Source code -> magic -> running program. This article uncovers the magic of the compilation process.
Linkers and Loaders
Linux Journal article.
A Whirlwind Tutorial on Creating Really Teensy ELF Executables for Linux
Goes into detail on the ELF executable format.

Vendors, Distributors, Merchants