The Tank Project!

So my brother Rob and I have wanted to work on a project together for a while now, and after our awesome Minecraft Server, we came to the realization that I love doing the functional side of things (setting up the software, etc.) and Rob loves doing the creative, hands-on side of things (putting the hardware together and making it look pro) and so together, this things compliment each other!

After scoring a Netduino (like an Arduino, but I write in C#.net instead of C) for use in a future project, this was the perfect opportunity for our skills to come together as Rob isn't keen on programming, and I'm probably not as good as him at making things, whereas he is quite passionate about that!

I've always wanted to have a play with an Arduino (or Netduino in this case). To actually allow my interest in programming to bridge across to the hardware world always seemed like a mystical unknown to me, but these little programmable micro-controllers allow just that - my software to use hardware!

Enter The Tank Project!

The idea was to build a physical tank that we can use the Netduino to control, but not just limited to controlling the movement of the tank, but then a variety of other features.
Things that came to mind were a working (not-so-dangerous, legal) canon, webcam feeds for remote control, mobile application to drive it, 360 degree spinning turret and just about anything else we could think of!
Our imagination started going wild with vague memories back to Robot Wars and so we set aside a day to brainstorm ideas and develop a plan of attack (pardon the pun). That day was yesterday, and it went well! :)

We're going to try to keep a project blog going if you want to keep track of the progress:
http://tank.stevenocchipinti.com

("keep track of the progress" is also a pun... theres going to be a few of these, lol!)