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
Robot56's Astromech Droid
Toymaker's The Latest ALTAIR Robot - SCAMP
jstarne1; This one, that kkeast used for his RAD:
H Bridge
Hahaha!, Good one Kevin!:)
good price $17 but from china no stock as of today ,robotshop does them in stock for $22 but i like this one from cytron single motor 10 amp $13.86 and need 2 of them much higher current handle dfrobot 2 amps this 10 amp 15 amp peak less heat,2 amp design cutting it close cytron 10 bridge single motor
also if you are looking to use 2 amd dual motor using the same chip as dfrobot design solarobotics has one for about $18 ,robotshop has it for $18 + $10 for shipping but solarbotics website has is for shipping cheaper $7.61
solarbotic l298 dual motor controller
I just got this h bridge for 20 bucks shipped its very heavy duty. It's rated 10 amp per channel continuously.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/160738711814?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1497.l2649
It says 60 amp peak. (i believe that's 30 per channel). 10 amp per channel continuously. This also has a braking.function.if you.used a wheelchair motor.
yes i ordered that one a few days ago,very nice board,little big,have plans for a larger motor for it
whats better about this design it uses mosfets lot of the other ones like L298 and others use transistors so more heat and higher resistance with mosfets you get more power,less heat, low resistance,instead of all those transistors for drivers they should use a mosfet driver chip but that china made,i have design high power full h bridge controller 120 amp per channel design for large wheel chair motors for my big robot
@JT and for anyone else interested.
Here is a short tutorial video on how to control ARC with EvenGhost using a TCP/IP client python script. EventGhost is a really cool free program that has a ton of functionality to control all kinds of things. It has plugins that allow you to connect an IR remote to your PC and start controlling other programs. It is a little hard to explain it if you have not worked with it but you can check it out at the link below.
EventGhost has a python engine built in when you install it. This allows you to run Python scripts from within it. I really like python and have used it to build simple TCP/IP communications apps.
EventGhost also has an Android App that is worth checking out.
Here is the script that will connect to a localhost ARC server on port 6666:
##client.py from socket import * import time HOST = 'localhost' #or the IP address of the machine where ARC server is running PORT = 6666 #our port from before ADDR = (HOST,PORT) BUFSIZE = 4096 cli = socket( AF_INET,SOCK_STREAM) cli.connect((ADDR)) data = cli.recv(BUFSIZE)
cli.send('enter your ARC command here\n')
cli.send('say(how are you today)\n') cli.close()
EventGhost
Sorry for the resolution on the video...its not that good..if you go full screen you can capture the 'macro creation'. I can try to get some better resolution if folks would like. Note: this is one way send from EventGhost to ARC. You can receive data but you have to put it into EventGhost global variables. I started with this but changed to using my Home Automation Software instead. If you would really like to do bi-directional I can give you some code that at least gets it into EventGhost..but then you have to do something with it once you get it.
v/r
Kevin
thats KEVIN will try with my USB-UIRT i see it has a plug-in for and would like bi-directional for X10 modules i have them on every light and sockets,my hot tub control and A/C
Hey kkeast;
How did you wire your Dual servo PIK to the Ez-Board, for the RAD?
@rr333 here is the info ,i guess no coffee today +5 EZB to Vcc on pik GND EZB to GND on pik Signal EZB to RX on pik Motor Supply voltage (battery) to VMOT on pik Motor supply GND to GND on pik
Motors 1 and 2 hooked up to -M1+ and -M2+
info on page 2