wall-e tilting eyes?

Question

Hello,

I wanted to see if there is a way to place a servo (micro servo) in the the u command wall-e to make his eyes angle in and out.....i think the wall e does that out of box, gives the wall-e more "emotion". Is there a way to keep that "feature" while including the left right and up/down motions we already have?

thanks,

Carlos

radmeck · Answer

Hey Carlos, check out my Big WALL-E thread. I used a Tamiya Ladder-Chain & Sprocket Set for his neck and a small direct-mount servo to maintain the eye-tilting...

hoolagen1 · Answer

Hello Rad, Thanks for the response! Funny, ive seen your thread a ton of times and always wondered what the small servo mounted on the red wheel (directly under the neck) was for? How are you making the eyes tilt with a servo attached there? I see the big servo, attached to the turquoise mount moves the the chain that moves the neck left and right, correct? but how does the small servo located directly underneath the neck, tilt the eyes? If i can figure this out i might also place micro servos in wall-e arms to make the hands rotate.(like the ultimate wall e) I found a micro servo online with the rotating nub on top, ebay link. I want to add tilting eyes and rotating hands, if i could i would love for the hands to open and close too. Giving it as much "emotion" as possible thanks, Carlos

hoolagen1 · Answer

one more thing, awesome work, you got the arms nice and close to the body, same with the neck, cant tell servos are there, you kept the cutting to a minn.....very nice. How did you make the chain? and what the benefit to that vs placing the neck directly on the servo? any links to the micro servos you used? i just notice the servo under the IR sensor, nice. Thanks again, Carlos

zzl630 · Answer

Carlos, I think we are both playing with Wall-E. I already bought 4 those micro servos, and they arrived today. One thing I need to point out is those servo wires are tiny. They are not gonna fit EZ-B's pin. See picture comparing with Wall-E 's eye and EZ-B.  Now I don't know what I can use for those servos.

hoolagen1 · Answer

Hello, even if the wires are small, cant you soder some reqular servo wires to the existing cables? If so, you can place the micro server inside wall-e arm. Inside the yellow part of the arm, to rotate the grey hand. Can yiu post a pic or the servo next to the arm? Thanks carlos

zzl630 · Answer

Sure That's why I placed my soldering kit order yesterday. I'll post the picture later. I was hoping I can use this tiny servo to control wall-e's hand.

hoolagen1 · Answer

Hello, Yeah that exactly what i meant. can you tell if that micro srervo will fit inside of the yellow part of wall-e arm? thanks. RADMECK - Please do tell how your getting the eyes to tilt by placing a servo there?

zzl630 · Answer

Here is the pic.

hoolagen1 · Answer

oh wow, much smaller than i thought. I dont think it will support the hand. Maybe this servo will fit inside nano servo instead or micro servo MAybe there is a way to use this micro servo in the actual "claw" part of the hand, making open and close, like the ultimate wall-e (still trying to figure that one out) But for now it looks like these servos might be too small....DJ Sure's, what do you think?

hoolagen1 · Answer

hELLO, Ive been thinking, and maybe you cn use the micro servos for eyes. Some sort of shutter to give the illusion wall-e is blinking, instead of turning the LED on and off you can use the micro servo to have somehting "block" a portion of the light... exactly like the ultimtae wall-e wdyt?

zzl630 · Answer

Yea ultimate wall-e is pretty cool. I think I am going to use it as eyebrow like mike did. Check out this video. His Wall-e is really cooool.

hoolagen1 · Answer

Brilliant. That should be much more easier than the blinking eye idea. I see in the video how to do it, but what are you going to make the eyebrow out of? Or are you going to cut it out of the side of the eyes? Also, any idea on how one would make the hands open and close? Thanks, carlos

jamerperson · Answer

I had an idea about that. I don't have a wall-e to play with so i'm not sure if this will work, but how about since you don't want the servo showing, place it inside his body, and connect it to the had by either piano type wire, string or metal rod. wire it through the arm that way you don't have anything showing.

hoolagen1 · Answer

Hello, Ok i found a tear down of an ultimate wall-e, the best set of pics are about the eyes, if you study them long enough you can see how to make the "shutter" within the eye work, giving wall-e the impression he is actually blinking, its actually pretty easy. micro servos, a couple of servo gears (few sizes) and a couple of pieces of cardboard should do it.... pics 100-2854 to 100-2857 really show how the servo would make the shutters(2 black pieces of plastic) work with a few gear attachments Heres the link so awesome...

radmeck · Answer

Carlos, I'll try to post a video a little later today so you can see how the neck and eye assemblies operate on my Big WALL-E.. I was able to re-use the gears already inside the neck to maintain the eye tilting. However, since the mechanism was being driven by a motor, I had to add a Servo Stretcher to extend the range of motion of the micro servo closer to 180 degrees. I re-used as much of the original design as I could with varying levels of modification. It took a good deal of forethought, time and patience to remove only what was absolutely necessary from the shell to get all the parts to fit in just right. For the neck assembly, I used the Tamiya Ladder-Chain & Sprocket Set. I'm pretty sure the only other parts I used were spare computer parts I had lying around...

zzl630 · Answer

Wow it looks like ultimate wall-e using only one motor to control raise arm, rotate and open gripper. Anywhere still sell ultimate wall-e cheap? I don't get how's that working. Wish I can find a picture take apart the gripper. I am going to cut the eyebrows piece out and do something like Mike did.

hoolagen1 · Answer

EXACTLY! i think youdont have control over opening and closing the hand, it does it "auomatic ally" when moving he arm up and down.....if you look at the pic with the arm open it looks like the metal bar has some slack in it, meaning when its pulled tight, (arm raised) the bar pulls in on the hand......kinda dissapointing. I like the idea of the eyebrows, but my problem would be the hinge, the bottom part of the eyebrow would still have to be attahed to the wall-e head....seems like over time this will break. I am determinedd to make the wall-e blink...i will post pics on progress once i get something done. radmeck - missed yur post thre, a video would be epic!, i think i get what yur saying. moving the neck left and right wont be hard, moving the head up and down, seems easy enough but can i make the eyes tilt and move the head up and down is the questions....also wondering, if i keep most of the original componets for eye tilting, will i still be able to fit a wifi cam in one eye?......sorry for rambling, just way amped about this project... thanks guys

TXTCLA55 · Answer

Hoolagen1, if you want to make the eyebrows bend, buy some small hinges. You can find them at Home Depot and maybe some craft stores. Then using contact cement, bond the hinge to the eyebrow and the rest of Wall-e's eye. I am doing a project (cant say yet) where I will be using a servo to open an area on my robot. I am using the hinge method and so far it works perfectly. Hope this helped! ~TXTCLA55

radmeck · Answer

Yes, I have an Ultimate WALL-E and it would be all sorts of disappointing if you purchased it thinking it would actually be as cool as it looked in the promotional videos. Out of the box I'd call it more animatronic than robotic. That being said, if you purchased it for the sole purpose of turning it into an "Asylum WALL-E" by hacking it up to do all the things it looks like it's capable of doing and adding a dose of EZ-B magic, then it's an outstanding platform to start with! carlos - yes, if you do it the way I have, the neck on the U-Command WALL-E needs to be rigid because of the internal gearing. I had actually started designing a mechanism using two nano servos and tiny control arms inside the eye housings to tilt them independently so that I could then make the head go up and down. However, rather than drive myself to destroy my home with a sledge hammer, I decided I needed to be rational about my skills and accept that certain limitations were normal for any version 1 of a given build project. That's also when I decided to purchase an Ultimate WALL-E and hone my skills on the lesser WALL-E's before doing anything with him. Now I'm not trying to turn you away from doing exactly what you want to do. For me, however, I know for a fact I saved my home! TXTCLA55, you can't say yet? What, are you hiding sensitive state secrets or something? It better have nothing to do with operating WALL-E's trash compactor or the Omnibot's clear head dome - I wanted to be first for those!

TXTCLA55 · Answer

LOL yes radmeck, its really a need to know basis. If you really want to know...its going to be something along the lines of the auto-bots from transformers in a way.

radmeck · Answer

That's better...

TXTCLA55 · Answer

Yea sorry, but I like to keep it a secret until its finished.

hoolagen1 · Answer

hello, txt - thanks, i didnt now tiny hinges (small enought to fit in the eye) existed, i will be hitting my local stores this weekend, that should make this nice and easy.... Rad- thanks for the well explained post - i gotcha now.... If i want to keep the original eye tilt, the neck cannot move left to right due to internals... If i try to put in my own micro servers, i will def. loose my mind and destroy everything in sight. i KNOW my skill set is much less than yours...so if you dint want to tackle the project neither will I. Well said too, 1st project - know your limitations....Words to live by. BUT......if that is the case, why the 2 servos for the neck? I see one is attached to the chain mechanism, but there is also a smaller servo directly under the neck? Do you need both to power the chain and make the eyes tilt? THIS FORUM IS AWESOME!

radmeck · Answer

Oh sorry, the neck can certainly move left and right (which is what the chain assembly is for) - what you can't do is make it go up and down! You basically retain the movements of the original design but gain the ability to operate them independently rather than as part of a mechanized routine...

hoolagen1 · Answer

Rad- I re-read your post, gotcha. so the chain mechanism turns the neck left and right, the small servo with the "servo stretcher" moves the tilting in the eyes, its the up and down motion i will be missing out on. if you look at the link of the ultimate wall-e tear down, that wall e has a motor in the middle of both eyes, with a fairly simple mechanism to make them tilt, if i can replicate that i wont need the mechanism inside the neck...... not sure if you caught that..... ucommand wall-e = motor to tilt eyes, underneath neck, plus gers within the neck ultimate wall-e ' motor in the middle of eyes plus simple "arms" to tilt eyes thats where i think the micro servo will come in handy! wdyt? .

hoolagen1 · Answer

BUMP?

hoolagen1 · Answer

hello guys any updates on the wall-e's? i finally got one on ebay, just wanted to see if you guys had a chance to upload those pics and vids we talked about.... thank guys

milanmark · Answer

I am also interested in the mentioned pics & vids if you guys have time to post them, thanks! @hoolagen1: on 9/1 you posted a link for some teardown pics but it appears busted... can you check it and let me know if there is another link or ??? to look at the teardown pics? I also am just starting on a Wall-E and have the same desire you do to keep the head tilting. That's next and I am still trying to figure it out! Thanks!

hoolagen1 · Answer

ill get on that tonight

Troy · Answer

Wow i didnt follow this thread before. I cant wait to see how this comes out!

mereyes · Answer

@milanmark: You can see breakdown pics for the Ultimate Wall-e here Copy & paste the link to your web browser https://www.flickr.com/photos/22144851@N03/sets/72157612059163249/comments/

milanmark · Answer

@mereyes: Thanks! Lots of ideas from those pics!

hoolagen1 · Answer

i cant figure out the tilting eye motion.....

the pics of ht ultimate wall-e show they used 1 servo to tilt both eyes.

there's a weird looking "arm" connected from the servo going to the left eye, then from the end of that "arm" another arm going to the right eye

can i make both eyes tilt down at the same time with 1 servo? because for my idea, im using a servo in each eye to get them to "tilt"

hoolagen1

Wall-E Tilting Eyes?

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