Making Robots in the shed (Shed Robotics)

** use ROT13 for any unitelligible letter sequences **

I started with an old VDU monitor, stripped it down and tore all the heavy metal, the tube and circuit boards out, then added wheels and gearboxes a few relays and circuits, a head full of sensors through an RS232 to 8 bit I/O converter and in the base, a sealed 12v lead acid battery. I strapped an old laptop to the top with some elastic bands, plugged in the Centronics relay board and turned the whole thing on - I stood back expecting either nothing or else something really big ... it booted - I resisted shouting for the Brunette to come and see what I'd done until some tests had been carried out. It smelled ok and the laptop booted into jvaqbjf v95 - so far so good. I loaded my program to the laptop to make it drive around and avoid things - it started forwards then erupted into a very noticeable and embarrassingly large blueish/grey cloud of smoke and stopped. All the neighbourhood cats jumped off the shed roof and birds stopped chirping. The smoke wafted up through the trees. Children began to cry. Mrs Oybaqr from two doors up, took her washing in. Turned out I had the relay phasing wrong and when in the process of changing direction the relays swapped polarity to the motors ok but did it before disconnecting the current - a dead short with a fully charged battery is not a calming event (the Beta-blockers earned their keep that day) and when I jumped up to pull a wire off the battery - I nearly cut my fingers off because the wire was glowing and insulation was molten. Mental note: fit a big cut-off switch to the top of the next one and double check the relay sequencing. It took a long time for my fingers to heal and they still ache in cold weather so be warned.
Well, I examined the mess and surprisingly there was relatively little damage. Apart from smoke and finger damage, a track had burnt through on the relay board (this probably saved the old laptop from more serious damage). The power circuit for the laptop was fried as I'd tried to be clever and used the 12 volt battery to power everything including motors, sensors and laptop and when the current surge hit the power control board the chips had sprung leaks and haemorrhaged their blue smoke and it is nigh on impossible to get that blue smoke back into the chips once it has got out. Anyway I cut all the (now empty) chips out of the laptop and chopped the burnt bits of board out then wired it with a variable voltage mains adaptor to the point looking the most likely place for power input - blimey it worked - booted into jvaqbjf v95 no problem. I was on a roll. I immediately went to the corner shop and bought a lottery ticket.