First Real Look At My Ez-b Controlled Full Size Lis B9 Robot

@fxrtst, I remember. Wasn't it last year you hatched the idea. You said you needed to revise your business plan upon the ez-robot revolution announcement. It stuck with me because of your backround and it caught my interest.

Actually the b9 arms is a different animal. I have something I've been developing in the computer for about a year. But day work just got in the way. I've taken a lot of time off to get this done for Kickstarter. The V4 board is the last part I've been waiting on. I've been designing for probably 500 to 600 hours, so hopefully it will pay off. I have a new laser 3 d printer arriving in 2 weeks. This thing will be able to print the detail I need all the way down to 25 micron layers. That equals very high resolution detail in the final product. All the parts will be made right here in Los Angeles. Obviously I will announce here when the campaign starts.

Hi Guys, Thanks for bumping my project page. It's always an honor when I see it near the top of the feed again. The past few months have been a mix if failures, frustrations, overcoming learning curves, learning new things and taking care of home and hearth. However more of that latter in this post. First,

@Bret, Glad to hear your building a bot again. I'll gladly share any info I have with you. I'm flattered you think my design would work for you. I'm very happy with my first design (the one you are asking to copy). It was very smooth and precise. Part of the frustration I mentioned was that I rewired everything in my leg section to run off a Sabertooth 2x12 and Kangaroo X2. I've decided to rip all that out and go back to my first system of a simple Pololu H-Bridge and a ADC port on the EZB. Anyway, please give me a week to get the drawings converted into a legible schematic for you. Like I said Hearth and Home are eating up most of my time right now. My waist movement system is also a 24v so it should work well for you. To start with the pot is a 10K multiturn pot that I have attached directly to an ADC port of EZB. Simply wired like this:

EZB ADC 5vdc pin to either outside lug of the pot EZB ADC Ground pin to the other outside lug of the pot EZB ADC Signal pin to the center lug of the pot.

Here's a couple links to pots that will work:

expensive pot

less expensive pot (the one I used)

Here are a couple pics of the waist motor and pot mounted in line:

Here's a couple pics of the limit switches mounted. They are wired normally closed and in circuit so when triggered the power to the motors will cut off. A simple diode on the micro switch will allow the DC power to reverse and back the motor off the switch.

Hope this helps for now. I'll get the drawing to you as soon as I have a little time.

@Will, I eventually plan to get my boards manufactured. However that may be a long tome from now. That's very low on my priority list. I kinda get a rush out of having my homemade boards mounted in B9 and working so well. There's ugly but sound. When I get to that point I'll gladly include you. It's great news that your planning to design and make a lighter version of your amazing B9 arms. Also the thought of you making available a animated B9 arm structure is mind blowing. I've seen your video of what you can do with the B9 arm and simple servos and want mine to respond just like that. I'd mortgage the farm to buy one of your kits.

Well, back to what's been going on; I'll try to make this short. The Sabertooth 2x12 and Kangaroo X2 combo turned out to be a exercise in futility. I really needed a good speed ramp up and down with variable speed and position control. As much as I tried I couldn't get a smooth movement or a good ramp. As far as I can tell there the Kangaroo has no native ramping in position mode. I had to write a script to pulse a increasing speed command over the serial connection to get ramping. Maybe that's why I cant smooth movement. Anyway, after reading the packet serial command manual there may be a way but I'm getting nothing but static from Dimension Engineering's support to help me confirm or help with a example code. Their manuals are written higher level experience users. It all adds up to scrapping the Sabertooth 2x12 and Kangaroo X2 combo and going back to the simpler, smoother and better responding EZB / Pololu H-Bridge combo. I plan to take a vid of how unacceptable the Sabertooth 2x12 and Kangaroo X2 is before I rip it out. I guess if I was a rocket scientist and knew C++ like the back of my hand I could get a nice ramp and smooth rotation but I don't want to spend over a year learning how to do all this. EZB will let me do it in a weekend.

If interested here are the threads where I worked through a few of the issues I had getting the Sabertooth 2x12 and Kangaroo X2 working:

synthiam.com/Community/Questions/5374

synthiam.com/Community/Questions/5304

synthiam.com/Community/Questions/5510

More to follow..............

Simply amazing job Dave. It can be frustrating at times. But building it over weeks months and years allows you to evaluate and rebuild certain parts until it works as you would like. Keep going. As for my kits and arms, you'll be first on my list to get a peak!

Thanks for the words of encouragement Will. They mean a lot. As always I'm looking forward to seeing what you come up with for the arm kit. I'm now torn on weather I should wait to see what you emerge with or press on and start building a set of my own. I know I'll want to scrap my plan when I see your creation.

My hands are full with the other project. Going to be awhile before I get to the arms for sure. And I have to get a large format printer as well. Keep moving forward on your arms you making good progress!

Dave, can I suggest you hold off scrapping the Kangaroo X2 for the moment as I have just bought a couple and to try them out I have programmed a PIC microcontroller with the algorithm that we were discussing earlier and the motors ramp up and down very smoothly as I think you require. I am using the Get Pos function to make this work and you will be able to use Get Pos when the V4 comes out as you will have bi-directional comms. I will try to get a video up of my test rig in the next couple of days to show you how it all works.

The Kangaroo and Sabertooth combo is very nice, I am very impressed how well it works.

Thanks Dave! This is awesome! BTW where did you get the sprockets and outer rings?