Now I have the EZ-B kit and the Hearoid it's time to start my Showcase thread.
I still haven't decided on a name for him yet, all suggestions are welcome.
I won this robot on ebay weeks ago, for the past 2 weeks he has been waiting for me to collect him...
Today was the day, a road trip to pick him up and bring him back to his new home...
In his new home (with Omnibot and Wall-e in the background totally unaware they are next in line to be opened up)
It wasn't long before this happened...
Now waiting to go in the dishwasher to get nice and clean.
The plan is to make him autonomous, running 24/7 (except for when he knows to go charge himself up) but will also be adding in the various image tracking options.
The only other slight modifications to be made to him are to convert the head to tilt & pan which will involve having to give him a small neck.
The head will include the camera. I haven't yet decided to fit it in one of his eyes or to make it his nose. The issue to overcome with this is the blue tint on the bubble head. The mouth will have a light or some lights in which flicker when he speaks.
The arms will be given some life with servos at the shoulder joints and the elbows provided I can get them to fit in there nicely.
Ultrasonic sensor will be in his chest, probably on a servo to give a wider view.
Original drive wheels and gearbox seem to be in very good shape so will plan to reuse those and just replace the existing motors for the modified servos if they can manage the task.
Speaker and microphone will be in the original positions - if it's not broke why fix it?
Not too big a project but enough to give me a test, help me learn and bring an old robot back to life.
Other robots from Synthiam community
Mcsdaver's Android Project Jen
Jeremie's Ravage The VHS Tape Robot
Dynamat is sound proofing. As far as I've been told it is the best of the best out there, or so the local car audio centre told me. It's used in cars to reduce road noise and to improve audio quality, I assume by absorbing the nasty vibrations through the chassis although I really have no idea. It's sticky backed, so a nice easy to use peel and stick solution too (at least mine is sticky backed, you may be able to get non sticky).
The little fella was sleeping so I thought I would grab a quick pic of how he is at the moment...
I still haven't got around to the other arm yet. I have tightened up the one that's fitted though and the vibration is a lot better. The new servos are here too although I have my doubts that they are genuine Tower Pro servos but we will see how they are when on.
IR sensor isn't staying like that, I was just testing the scripts etc.
And his neck will be covered I was just too lazy to fit it when I replaced the pan/tilt bracket.
Looking good though. Sleepy guy.
@Irobot only put grease where grease goes. Inside a gearbox. Only use lithium grease as petroleum based grease cases plastic old gears to become brittle. Yes inside a gearbox it can reduce noise. One thing ive tried is usinf analog servos over digital in cases where I want them very quiet. They don't make nearly as much racket and practically silent with dynamat. -Josh S
HOW to check the IR without a display tester like arduino ,on the output pin place a meter and to gnd ,place a dark item in front of it ,if it show voltage ,check little far away if it does more voltage then its good and EZB script not working or connection.
Aw don't they look cute when they're sleeping?
I have 2 of them ,so 1 i am going to restore to perfect condition ,on the other one will look at rich and others who made one and how i will make mine and changes
I see most of us like to make our own creation design and use some ideas of others. All of us likes to be different in our designs
I just love the way his head naturally drops slightly to the right when power is killed, I guess the weight isn't balanced but I like it like this so who cares
@robotmaker, I wasn't testing to find distance, I was testing my IR collision detection script to see if it works. The value returned to the ADC port on this IR sensor fluctuates by 1 or 2 when sitting still so accurate distance measurements wouldn't be advisable, but all I want it to do is know if something is within a few inches or so of him.It should be an 80cm range, so an adc of 255 is 80cm or above, or a factor of 0.3137254902 if I wanted to go down that route.
@Josh, I may look in to analogue servos if that's the case. There isn't much space for Dynamat in the elbows without restricting movement so none is on (yet) but having fixed the servo in properly now and closed the arm up nice and tight it's a lot quieter, I'll just have to avoid the servos as best I can when it comes time to paint it.
Just testing the charging circuit now as the battery finally dropped below 3.5v on one of the cells, but with the 800mA balance charger on a 5000mAh battery it's going to take some time (and to think, I am tempted to fit 4 more of them...) I may need to look in to a bigger charger as it can be safely charged at 6 times what I'm charging it at. But that's extra cost that I want to avoid. He was only supposed to be a cheap build and so far it's gone 3 times over budget (my fault for buying cheap rather than good).