tips for securing a laptop on a mobile platform?

Posted by Joe Strout on December 8, 2006, 1:50 pm

I'm working on a laptop bot based on a chassis from an old RAD robot. I
can pretty easily attach a foot-square piece of expanded PVC sheet (from
Budget Robotics) to this chassis... but then how do I attach my
Powerbook G4 to this sheet?

The laptop is about 14 by 10 inches, and I'm looking for a method that
doesn't involve any permanent modifications to the laptop itself. Any
ideas are welcome.

Thanks,
- Joe

Posted by Gordon McComb on December 8, 2006, 2:44 pm

Joe Strout wrote:

>
> I'm working on a laptop bot based on a chassis from an old RAD robot. I
> can pretty easily attach a foot-square piece of expanded PVC sheet (from
> Budget Robotics) to this chassis... but then how do I attach my
> Powerbook G4 to this sheet?
>
> The laptop is about 14 by 10 inches, and I'm looking for a method that
> doesn't involve any permanent modifications to the laptop itself. Any
> ideas are welcome.

You want to visit Home Depot and look for something you can use as an L-
or U-bracket, with an opening large enough for the laptop. Line it it
with some rubber (weatherstripping is nice) to prevent marring the
chassis of the laptop. Look in the bathroom fixtures department for
mirror brackets and other assorted hardware that you can use as
hold-downs. BR has some lightweight plastic brackets you can use to make
your own L or U, but you can use the zinc-plated metal ones at the
hardware store.

The better approach, of course, is to just screw the thing to the
plastic panel and go out and buy a Mac with an Intel chip in it. Then

you can run Windows like the rest of us! <g>

-- Gordon

Posted by Joe on December 9, 2006, 9:03 am

I am also thinking about attaching a laptop to my Roomba floor sweeper.
However, I am concerned about the hard drive getting jolted around as
the wheels go over irregularities in the floor and door thresholds.
Another concern is that I don't want the display to have to take all
the forces on its hinge.

The pictures I've seen of other robots with laptops don't seem to have
any shock-absorbing mounts for the laptops. So, perhaps I am just
overly concerned.

At https://www.zagrosrobotics.com they have a few different bases
designed for Laptops. But, I don't see anything special to hold the
laptop down, or for shock absorbing.

It may be that just the bolts for the wheels help to trap the laptop to
keep it from sliding off, and that the mass of the robot and its
battery provide enough "inertial dampening" to reduce the shock load on
the laptop.

Joe Dunfee

Posted by Joe Strout on December 11, 2006, 3:45 pm

> I am also thinking about attaching a laptop to my Roomba floor sweeper.
> However, I am concerned about the hard drive getting jolted around as
> the wheels go over irregularities in the floor and door thresholds.
> Another concern is that I don't want the display to have to take all
> the forces on its hinge.

I don't worry too much about the hinge -- it's made of titanium, and the
floor in my house is pretty smooth even where it transitions from carpet
to hardwood. The hard drive is another issue, though. I may try to
write my code in such a way that it doesn't need to be using the hard
drive in normal operation. Though with Unix, it's hard to prevent that
completely, as there are always a number of other processes going on in
the background.

I think I've decided that I'm comfortable putting self-adhesive velcro
strips on the bottom side of this laptop. I'll put the soft side on the
laptop, of course, with the prickly side on the robot base. These will
actually provide a small bit of shock absorption too, though admittedly
not very much.

Long-term, I'll probably end up asking myself why I'm using a laptop at
all, and may replace it with a combination of embedded controllers (e.g.
Gumstix) and dedicated I/O boards (e.g. for speech recognition and
synthesis). But short-term, this is definitely the easiest way for me
to go, and I'm excited to see what we can do with it.

Cheers,
- Joe

Posted by Jon Hylands on December 11, 2006, 4:38 pm

> Long-term, I'll probably end up asking myself why I'm using a laptop at
> all, and may replace it with a combination of embedded controllers (e.g.
> Gumstix) and dedicated I/O boards (e.g. for speech recognition and
> synthesis). But short-term, this is definitely the easiest way for me
> to go, and I'm excited to see what we can do with it.

I've decided to go with a Wifi module on the robot, and my laptop sitting
safely on a desk running the brains.

Later,
Jon

--------------------------------------------------------------
Jon Hylands Jon@huv.com http://www.huv.com/jon

Project: Micro Seeker (Micro Autonomous Underwater Vehicle)
http://www.huv.com

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