Hey all. I was really excited when my EZ-B arrived about a week ago. While it was on its way I was searching around for my first project. Thanks to DJ's great website and Ebay I found what I wanted. I picked up a RAD 2.0 for 15 bucks. It did not have any remote or battery charger (so what). And today I started on it! I hope to post my progress here and open to any ideas you all might have. As you can see I wasted no time before I opened it up!
The RAD 2.0 has what looks like a decent track base with motors and gear boxes (a bit loud when I tried out the motors). It has a physical gearbox selector switch for High and Low gearing (I will need to put a servo on that) which will be cool to mess with. The interesting thing about this guy is that he bends at the waist. He also has two arms that work together to grasp an object. It looks like can bend all the way over and pick up an object on the floor (we shall see). After opening it up I noticed it appears to be a decent thing to start modding.
I have an H bridge on the way for the track motors and I probably going to need another if I want to use the existing motors that control the waist and arm movements. I am thinking of putting in a accelerometer as well so when the bot goes up or down hills it could stabilize itself automatically! It will surely have a distance sensor...just not sure where to put it yet, camera, and probably go with an MP3 trigger. You may notice the circle on his chest...The original toy was remote control and could fire nerflike darts (pretty neat). Not sure I will keep that functionality as I am thinking of other cool gadgets to hook up to him. Tonight I tackled the head movement.....I will post more on that later.....
Kevin
Other robots from Synthiam community
Morbeious's Alpha (Dev Servo Bot)
Daman's Yet Another Wall-E
@Brett, I am going to add code and make him partially autonomous but really only 1 or two functions - Sentry Bot. He is fun to just drive around with the joystick, especially with the gearbox on the high mode! I am just about done with modding him and will be buttoning him up and moving on to my next project soon, a much bigger bot. My big issue with Legion (RAD 2.0) was the small space. Very tight working and lots of screws. I have two more mods I am going to do. The coding for him will not be to in depth. I would have loved to outfit more stuff into him but the space is so limited! I have not done any sound dampening...yet....Legion is VERY Loud right now. I just need more space to work in. We can total do some brain storming on ideas. Your B9 looks awesome so far!
@robotmaker, I do like the idea of getting going with the LEAF project. It sounds very cool but time has not been there as of lately. ROBOREALM also looks very interesting. I will be posting some pics of my latest Legion mod very shortly.
v/r
Kevin
@kkeast i made a design special control board to fit inside the RAD 2.0 PLUS PICO-ITX BOARD AND BATTERIES to run the LEAF software and ROBOREALM board is the LEAF MICROCONTROLLER board with a fast CPU also big changes on the drive system for to handle a larger load about 50 lbs carry
Hey All,
Legion is still alive and kicking. I tore him all the way down and did some cosmetic changes. I have also added a new feature. As a Sentry bot I don't want anyone sneaking up on him so I added some mini PIR sensors. There is no way you can sneak up on him now! I started a thread a while back on these and these little $4.50 sensors seem to be doing the trick. Check out Legions new base:
Link to PIR Sensor Thread
I love the new color! Nice, neat job!
@kkeast back from my long trip and 14 packages where waiting for me of robot parts ,and robots in one of the boxes is the I2C mp player,so cant wait to try it out taking my girlfriend out to dinner for taking good care of picking my boxes up ,tonight there was a few parts backordered,but got a lot ,still have more comming in this week
i see you have the PIR'S facing up,that doesnt work too well,i have tried it unless looking to detect the light change way PIR works it detects movement in front of the sensor ,it does have a fresnel lens that does help a little this is what PIR sensor DETECTS allows the detection of humans, pets or other warm bodied objects such as candles as well as other heat sources when facing up wont really detect heat or person motion very well facing forward it detects about a 360 deg might work if sens pot is at full gain,but depend on alot of factors
@kkeast - I am going to use the same type sensor for my B9 build. I plan on putting them on the side of his leg section
@robotmaker, Glad you made it back safe from your trip...sounds like you have some building to do now. Looking forward to hearing about your progress!
About these little PIRs. As an EE, I get the theory part behind PIRs...but the reality is with these devices i just threw in there...I cannot get within 6 feet of the base before they trip and I didn't even mess with the pots! They work really well, even surface mounted! We shall see how they behave in other conditions but for now...I am pretty happy with them.
I was not looking for anything long range....my house PIRs handle the entry points.....i just needed more of a proximity sensor and these will do the trick!
Bret....those should work well for your legs I think.
v/r
Kevin
@bret.tallent thats a good spot to place it ,but i would look at amn22100 from digi-key one main reason you almost cant see it,very small, analog out but they have others with digital output like the one kkeast is using i have a a couple not using ,might look to sell or find a use for it also different detection types from the same company,like spot ,wide FOV (field of view) and others one like KKEAST is using great for outside lights and alarms ,but not great in robotics,it still works but false reading sometimes, but good because cheap,check the one used on my brookstone ROVER project very small and can distance to person or heat source or person moving spot types are little better because no false reading from other heat sources ,like sun ,stove the best one is TPA81 it checks inside temperature and compares to 8 other heat sources plus if you pan it can make whats called a tremal image of a person or heat source ,almost like a camera does except in heat patterns