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I have decided to start my InMoov project. I think I will call him Spock out of respect to Leonard Nimoy who passed away on the day that I started this project.
I am editing this post so as not to confuse people with the current configuration. I continue to update this post with the latest photos. If you are reading this for the first time, don't be confused. There have been a lot of changes to the InMoov over the past couple of years including starting over.
https://synthiam.com/Community/Questions/7398&page=21 Post 203 starts the rebuild of the InMoov.
I have decided to use an onboard computer. I chose the Latte Panda due to it having an onboard arduino Leonardo and also because it uses little power.
I used 2 EZ-B controllers connected via the camera port to Adafruit FTDI friend boards. This allows the Latte Panda to have a non-wifi dependent connection to the EZ-B's. I use a powered USB hub connected to the USB3 port on the Latte Panda to attach other items.
The Omron HVC-P is used to identify people, emotions, human bodies, hands, age and gender. It is attached to the Latte Panda via an FTDI friend which is then connected to the powered USB hub. It is mounted in the chest of the InMoov. I also use a 3 element microphone which is a MXL AC-404 microphone. It is disassembled and the board and microphone elements are mounted in the chest of the InMoov. This mic board is connected to the Latte Panda via a usb cable which is attached to the powered USB hub. There is a USB camera in the eye of the InMoov which is connected to the Latte Panda via the powered USB hub.
I chose to use the Flexy hand with the InMoov. The design is far more rugged than the original hand and works very well. There are 4 EZ-Robot Micro Servos in the palm of each hand which controls the main fingers. The thumb is controlled by an EZ-Robot HD servo. The wrist waves and uses an EZ-Robot HD servo to do this motion. I use the standard Rotational wrist.
I have castle BEC's for power in the following locations set to the following voltages. Forearm's - 6.2 V - Controls fingers, wrist and elbows Custom power distribution board (2) set to 6.2 V controlling head, neck and Shoulder servos. EZ-B's - set to 6.1 V - it is mounted in the controller mounting plate and connects to the EZ-B fused power boards from a power base. Latte Panda - Set to 5.1 V and is mounted to the EZ-B controller mounting plate. Waist - set to 6.2 V and is mounted in the lower right side of the back. This provides power to the lean and pivot waist motors..
There are some custom power and signal distribution boards. These are in the forearms, lower back and in the upper back. The upper back or main board connects to these distribution points via USB cables to provide signal to the other boards for servos. The main board also has servo connector pins that are for the neck, head and shoulders. This allows the power to be distributed between multiple BEC's and also allows the servo signal cables to be shorter and more protected via the USB cables.
For power I use a LiFePo4 battery that is rated at 30 amps. It has the balanced charging circuit built into the battery and also has a low voltage shutoff built into the battery. This protects the battery and allows the battery to be charged with standard car chargers.
I put switches on the back on the InMoov which are rated at 20 amps at 12 volts. These are rocker switches that allow the user to pretty much slap the switch to turn it off. There are two of these switches. The servos for the elbows and fingers are on one switch. The latte panda, neck, shoulders, EZ-B's, waist motors and some lighting is on the other switch.
I also added a fuse block. This allows 20 amp fuses to be put in line to help protect things. The switches above drive the fuses for each of of the motors listed in that section.
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CochranRobotics&richard r
i know the feeling.am still a big robot fan from when i was very young. i had the best robots ,but the feeling was gone.and it never came back. now i get chemo,i have canser hodgkin,maybe i will cure,but its very hard. lot of pain for a few more years to live.richard force yourself to do robotics. do something outdoors.
on a side note.... If you are interested in weather at all, download GRLevel3 and watch Oklahoma today from about 4 PM CST until it is over. Conditions are ripe for a heck of a show this evening. This is how I pass my time when I stop printing due to a high likelihood of power outages.
When I went to the EZ-Robot offices last summer, there was a storm that was coming in. I looked for the weather radar there to see how bad it looked like it was going to be. The weather radar was down and nobody was concerned. Here, It would have been all over the news that a weather radar (one of about 5 covering this area) was down. There, it was no big deal that the only weather radar was down. It is a different world in Calgary for sure. It made someone from Oklahoma very uneasy because I check the radar quite often. This was the first time I had ever seen one off-line.
Anyway, baseball and softball size hail is possible along with probable tornadoes. Good times
Kansas will probably get hit hard too.
Patrick,
Sorry to hear about your condition. I hope for the best for you. Medical technology has come a long way and I pray that you will fight it off.
CochranRobotics
thanks david
@David, I sure understand about your brain and how it works. I'm the same way. I too have always been this way. I've managed to focus my skills to actually finish something, but it took about 45 years. The curse with this 'thing', is getting bored with something and moving on to the next 'thing' before anything was done on the first thing. The family suffers the most from this condition.
Alan was the first anything i finished and now he is on his third revision. With all the cool things EZB and ARC could do, it helped inspire and motivate me to figure a way to have Alan incorporate those tasks. So each time DJ adds a function, I want Alan to use them.
Can you tell me how you will connect the EZBs together in your InMoov using USB? Are you using the Latte Panda as the main computer in your robot?
Lastly, have you given up on the show or will you continue to move forward with it? With two weeks off you've probably lost alot of forward momentum.
I am moving forward with the show. Things just got in the way the last couple of weeks. Having a virus that threatened to take down the companies computers floating around didn't help last weekend at all. This week may be a weather event that prevents it but I hope it happens tonight and doesn't carry over into tomorrow much. Things just keep getting in the way,
I plan to try the LattePanda as the main computer in the robot. Will see how it works out. I will connect the USB to the camera port on the EZ-B's and use a other USB port on the LattePanda for a single camera for it. I will RDP into the LattePanda to control it from my laptop if I need to do that, but the goal is to make something that runs without human intervention other than voice and facial recognition. I don't know yet where I will mount the Omron sensor but there are a lot of possibilities. It might go in the chest but IDK yet. I figure that this will be the last thing I put in place. This will require that I add a USB hub but that is no big deal. Having a powered USB hub might not be a bad idea anyway.
Ok so each EZB is connected directly to a USB port on the computer (or hub). That is what i was trying to wrap my mind around.
Glad to hear the show will go on! (weather dependent)
@Will USB is basically serial... so adding a hub is like adding more serial ports to the computer... Each device (in this case EZB4's) attached to it will get it's own comm port for connection in ARC...