I am in the process of converting an old VAX vacuum cleaner into a robot. His name is PI-ro
I have inserted a Pentium 4 motherboard into the robot and run remote desktop to it by wifi from my laptop. The idea is to make PI-ro self contained. I am currently adding to its voice response vocabulary and have just finished cutting the spur tooth gears for the main wheel motors. I am waiting on my EZ Robot order to arrive which will let PI-ro do more than run around in circles.
The name PI-ro originated from my early plans to develop a robot using the Raspberry PI until I discovered the EZ Robot system, however the name stuck.
The following video shows PI-ro's first test drive with computer and associated components removed.
Have a look at the following Youtube video:
Will keep progress updated on this website.
Regards
Martin
Western Australia
Other robots from Synthiam community
Cardboardhacker's Mtr(Mechanical Tracked Robot)
Steve's Lt. Commander Data's Child "Lal"
I am using a DC to DC atx power supply for the Pentium 4. Motherboard, psu, hdd are all on board. The motors are powered from a 12 volt, 12 amp/hour sealed lead acid battery and the computer from two 12 volt 9 amp/hour batteries in parallel. PI-ro's total weight is around 15 kg.
A warm welcome and congratz with this impressive project. Very nice work indeed.
I'm hoping to see more of your work soon !
Greetz,
PhG
bret.tallent, EEGbiofeedback and PhG for the great comments.
I am now in the process of building the computer and other components into their permanent places inside the robot body and will do some more load testing of the motors and gears with a funtioning onboard computer system. I am still thinking about what to use for PI-ro's head in which I plan to mount the video camera and distance sensors. As a final addition I will give PI-ro some arms and a docking port to which he will connect when internal battery volts get low.
Thanks for your interest. Will keep you posted as things develop.
Martin
Thanks for your comments. I simply changed the bios config on the pc board to ignore all errors on boot up. I use TeamViewer7 as my remote desktop when I need to access the bot. I have a usb wifi dongle in place and I will connect to the ez-b as usual by bluetooth from the pc motherboard. Yes there isn't much air space and once the top is on then I will need extra air flow. There is a front hose hole which could be used as an air intake. Though I think I may make a larger hole underneath with a fan and grill to pull air in and push it out of the original air vent at the top.
Martin
The motors have been brought inboard above the driving wheels as they needed more substantial mountings.
I am using the mp3 trigger driving an audio amplifier with speakers attached. I have been able to tame the processor and servo noise interference to an acceptable level by putting some electro caps across the input and output of the audio amp.
The head is progressing. I have used a child's toy pair of binoculars and fitted blue bright LED's and the camera mounted internally between. I have successfully enabled face and colour tracking. Speech recognition is working though I think it needs some refining which will come as I fine tune the robot before his commissioning!
So generally I am having a lot of fun building this project and will provide a video once the head is secure.