ReconBot with the Tessel 2
rwaldron 
Materials
To build our robot, you'll need the following parts:
Additional Supplies
- 1 Long, plastic wire tie
- Monoprice Hook and Loop Fastening Cable Ties (Amazon)
- Scotch Exterior Mounting Tape, 1-Inch by 60-Inch (Amazon)
- 1 Creative Live! Cam Sync HD 720P Webcam (Amazon)
- 1 iXCC 8000mAh Compact Power Bank (Amazon)
Meet the Supporting Hardware
Shadow Chassis and Wheels
The SparkFun Shadow Chassis is an economic and straightforward platform for constructing a robot. It comes as a kit that has a bunch of parts—our robot will use many, but not all of the parts in the kit.
The chassis will be the "body" of our robot, a frame to which we can attach motors, wheels, a camera, and our robot's other components.
Camera
While creating the robot, we experimented with several different USB cameras and ultimately settled on the Creative Live! Cam Sync HD 720P Webcam. While we'll admit the product name is quite a mouthful, we like this camera because:
- It's reliable: this camera is a work horse—you'll see.
- It's easy to mount and position: the clip for mounting this camera to a monitor or similar vertical surface is perfectly suited for easy attachment to the top panel of Shadow Chassis (as you'll see below).
Battery Pack
You'll be powering the bot with any adequate USB power bank; the iXCC 8000mAh Compact Power Bank (Amazon) is inexpensive and handy.