Olin Robots Wiki

http://www.Amazon.com

http://www.mcmaster.com/ Fast shipping and great variety offset higher prices.

http://www.smallparts.com/ Smaller hardware, small tubes and valves.

http://www.sdp-si.com/ Shaftloc! also great drive components. Metric gear motors. Do not attempt to browse directly through buy online page.

http://www.reidsupply.com/Default.aspx Lesser known alternative to mcmaster

http://www.newark.com/rcbo-rcd-gfci An industrial electronics supplier. They have great variety

http://www.digikey.com/ Less flashy website, but very cheap. Even better variety than Newark in some regards.

http://www.mouser.com/ Another classy electronics supplier.

http://avnetexpress.avnet.com/store/em/EMController?langId=-1&storeId=500201&catalogId=500201&action=home A very industrial supplier. These guys carry Xilinx FPGAs.

http://www.microchip.com/ Go ahead, order yourself some free sample PICs. This is the manufacturer.

http://www.goldmine-elec.com/ If you shop around you can find some very nice parts for very cheap. Less on the documentation.

http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/categories.php This retailer is more expensive, but does go out of it's way specifically to benefit hobbyists.

http://www.trossenrobotics.com Distributors of small, cute hobby robots and a gigantic variety of actuators, controllers, communications chips, sensors, batteries, etc. etc. etc. Everything you'd need to build the best POE project ever.

http://www.robotshop.ca Distributor like Trossen, has different kits and some different parts. Difficulty: Canadian.

http://www.lynxmotion.com Makers of a bunch of slightly crappy hobby robots and kickass servomotor controllers. Go here if you want to control servos from Matlab (see SSC-32). Motors and other hardware are OK, nothing * [http://special.

http://www.robotmarketplace.com A Battlebots parts distributor from the makers of Nightmare. Go here for 15 horsepower DC motors and the electronics to drive them from a remote controller.

http://www.roboporium.com The place to go for small robotic bipeds. Warning - not all manuals are in English…

http://www.e-clec-tech.com Lots of small, random robotic parts you can't find anywhere else. Warning - their website design might make your eyes bleed.

http://www.robotstore.com A distributor of a wide variety of small, slightly crappy hobby robot parts. Worth a look if you're bored, or if want to buy robotic toy kits as presents.

http://www.vexlabs.com Makers of an easy-to-use erector-set-style robotic construction system. Worth a look if you want a reconfigurable kit robot with interchangeable parts.

http://www.mobilerobots.com Makers of the ubiquitous Pioneer robot, a decent-size, decent quality, fully autonomous platform capable of wandering around flat ground without bumping into walls.

http://www.parallax.com Makers of the BOEbot, the Toddler and the BASIC stamp. Go here if you want to buy a kit that explains every single step along the path to creating autonomous robots, of if you want cheap sensors.

http://www.nventivity.com/ROVIAB.html Build your own ROV with underwater motors and a camera for only $250. Don't look at the rest of the site if you value your eyes.

http://www.irobot.com Looking for a well-packaged, cheap robot base that just works? Get an iRobot Create (essentially, a hacked Roomba with a serial interface).

http://mindstorms.lego.com The quintessential lego robotics kit. 'Nuff said.

http://www.towerhobbies.com Tons of servos and remote control everything. Search engine is a pain in the ass. Be sure to look out for their near-constant sales and combo deals. If you know what servo you want, buy it here.

http://www.hobby-lobby.com Lots of remote control planes and helicopters. Their lithium polymer battery selection is pretty decent.

http://www.hitecrcd.com Hitec makes some pretty decent servos, and then kicks some serious ass with its HSR-5995TG titanium gear, 3 Newton-Meter stall torque “Robotic Servo”. Generally high quality.

http://www.robotis.com Makers of the Dynamixel servo series, the highest quality “hobby servomotor” on the market today. To give you an idea, the servos have a Maxon motor inside and communicate load and position data back over serial.

http://www.futaba-rc.com Hitec's biggest hobby servo competitor, also high quality.

http://www.magmotor.com Makers of high-quality, high-torque-density brushed DC motors with optional gearheads and encoders. The kind of company you need to call and ask for a quote (expecting price ranges of $50+ per motor).

http://www.micromo.com Distributors of Faulhaber motors, which are somewhere between Magmotor and Maxon in terms of quality and price.

http://www.maxonmotor.com Makers of some of the finest motors and gearheads in the world. Also the kind of company you need to call and ask for a quote (expecting price ranges of at least $100+ per motor).

http://www.harmonicdrive.net If you ever have hundreds of dollars to throw away, get one of these gear reducers. 100:1 in one stage, with a mechanism that boggles the mind.

http://www.solarbotics.com Mark Tilden's old company (before he started with Wowee). Makers of the cheapest and lightest gearmotors I've ever seen. Motors in the $5 to $25 range.

http://www.servocity.com If you EVER want to do ANYTHING with hobby servos, anything at all, go here first. Lots of servos to choose from, in addition to gears, sprockets, and shafts that fit right on to the classic servo spline.

http://www.banebots.com Makers of extremely lightweight, extremely cheap brushed gearmotors, of both spur and planetary varieties.

http://www.clickautomation.com Distributors of fully assembled and tested gearmotors with installed encoder feedback. Go here if you need a medium quality servomotor fast.

http://www.firgelli.com Makers of miniature linear actuators with position feedback.

http://www.andymark.biz Makers of FIRST-quality shift-on-the-fly transmissions for 1 to 2 horsepower motors. They also make kickass omniwheels and Mecanum wheels for omnidirectional robots.

http://www.shadowrobot.com One of the few companies that actually makes air muscles (also known as McKibben actuators). The bad news? They're a UK company, so shipping takes forever.

http://www.aircylinderdirect.com Go here if you need a pneumatic piston, fast. All the styles and bores you could think of. Don't forget all the fittings, tubing, regulators and storage tanks to go with.

http://www.theleeco.com Makers of super-miniature fluid valves and pumps.

http://www.kjmagnetics.com Need neodymium-iron-boron magnets? Go here. They're super cheap and come in all shapes and sizes. Don't get your lip stuck between two of them (see: Donahoe).

http://shopping.netsuite.com/s.nl/c.ACCT103531/sc.1/.f Small fluid pumps

http://www.ifirobotics.com Makers of the infamous “Victor”, the high-power speed controller used in FIRST (120 amps @ 24 volts continuous), and decent quality (overpriced) robot controllers that run on embedded C.

http://www.a-m-c.com Makers of the smallest industrial brushed and brushless motor controllers that I've been able to find.

http://www.galilmc.com Makers of decently easy-to-use, somewhat plug-and-play industrial motor controllers that talk Ethernet and serial.

http://www.ni.com/compactrio/ Recently demoed at Olin, an extremely rugged embedded computer with add-on modules for just about any electrical functionality you could possibly want. Runs on Labview.

http://www.gumstix.com Full-fledged computers that can run Linux and their own wireless servers… that are the size of a pack of gum. Special note - mounting them to anything is a bitch and a half, hope you have some #00-80 screws.

http://www.microchip.com Makers of the PIC, MPLab, etc.

http://www.analog.com/processors/blackfin/ Very nice DSPs, also runs on Labview.

http://www.freescale.com Makers of nice processors.

http://www.ti.com TI makes some pretty sweet DSPs.

http://www.robots.net Not updated that often, but fairly high quality news when it arrives.

http://www.robots-dreams.com Your source for everything related to small robotic bipeds.

http://www.topix.net/gadgets/robots High quality robotic news aggregator, seems to be on an iRobot kick recently.

http://www.gorobotics.net Amateur robotics blog.

http://blogs.spectrum.ieee.org/automaton A robotics blog by the IEEE, headed up by our very own Miks Taylor ('06).

http://www.robotcafe.com A decently maintained blog/robotics portal.