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
J's Rover My First Bot
LJ's Project Grim Reaper
Well I've sorted out the neck although I'm not 100% pleased with it but it'll do for now... It's still longer than I had hoped and after having to cut down the C Bracket and in the end making it an L bracket due to friction etc. it's very springy... It's not that bad but will be looking for ways to support it better soon... I may even scrap the pan/tilt bracket and try it another way with the tilt fixed to the bot and the pan to the tilt mech to save space (I literally have about an inch of space to use before the neck looks too long.
The ultrasonic testing didn't quite go to plan. It seems there are issues with black furniture when it comes to ultrasonic and typically, most of my furniture is black. So an IR sensor is also being used (although has it's own issues one being unable to control the Movement Panel but that's a minor setback).
Now, as far as the electronics are concerned it's just a case of building the switching circuits for the eye and mouth lights and building the battery monitoring circuit... once I figure out which batteries to use (thinking some 7.2v LiPo batteries at the moment but that's changed a few times already).
I still need to build the arms and attach them. Stupidly I managed to trim off too much of the original mount so the servo horn doesn't reach the servo when fixed to the arm (as DJs method in his Omnibot), that's something I need to fix but it's nothing that can't be built back up or fixed with spacers etc.
I also need to work out how, if at all, to move the elbow joints without having any servos or linkage on show... or at the very least, servos made to look like they are supposed to be there not just bolted on the side.
It's mainly been playing around with ARC and EZ-Scripts lately, writing scripts for various things like testing the head movement up, down, left & right. Moving at various speeds with PWM. Building dance routines (I was bored, sue me)... just generally getting used to what commands do what, working out how far a Forward(255,1000) command will move the bot, how many ms it takes to turn 90, 180, 270 and 360 degrees, how to make the head nod or shake... Just the basics...
The good news is, in 2.5 days I will finish work for a nice long 2 week break to be spend mainly on the bot, so come mid January I hope to have him (or her, undecided on sex yet, it depends how awkward it becomes and how much it costs) ready to be painted up all nice and pretty.
I'll also be posting more photos, sketches, calculations etc. soon... we don't see enough calculations and sketches on here IMO
Here's his head moving a little... controlled by the camera but really it was just picking up phantom faces (I assume due to low light levels in my house).
Like I said, the neck looks too long to me... It should be half that length.
I had a post about using sonars and IR,I guess you missed it Best way to use them and material that they cant detect,And on sonars it wont detect black material and more. Also ways to reduce the cone slope detection on sonars to pick up small objects in path,as thin as a pencil,one main item is table legs
I also work with metals ,plastics and some gears alot at work,i design at home my own servo gear boxes some better then you can buy (high torgue and low current)
RICH here is a idea i am using on my arms i hate plastics,not very strong,so on the inside of the plastic i cover it with a thin sheet of aluminium and then mount my servo's to it,makes the plastic much stonger and makes it easy for servo repairs nobody really thinks about it,just glue the servo hope it holds I do the same for my whole body of my omnibot 2000 project. Dont need to mount anything to my plastic body,no sensors or anything else check out my project my omnibot 2000 project
I agree rich , i love drawing the ideas for robots body and stuff. Yup his neck does have a giraffe thing going on. On my neck I just used an lynx motion bracket. 10 bucks. Not too long. I lost your email with your address rich email me agian so I can quote you on the clear dome/mask [email protected]
I not great in drawings and not good at it,put schematics i am super good at it.only it takes a lot of time I also forgot i have 2 HEAROIDS like your too ,havent made plans on them yet,one most likely restore for my big robot collection BUT the other one will have EZB in it,cant wait for APRIL a very big month no more work ever only build robots
On drawings may need JOSH on that,hope one day to visit him,but so much work,and then travel for work plus my big vacation with my girlfriend for 3 weeks in jamaica I never talk to much about jamaica ,but been there 53 times so far and best place ever to visit ALSO MY SEXY GIRLFRIEND IS JAMAICAN
RICH i see you are in UK,I went there 4 times so far great place many castles to see and people very nice,not like france or some parts of Europe what part of UK are you in
It uses the LynxMotion bracket, it had the long C on it which I changed for the short C and still too long, cut down a cheaper bracket for this but again, giraffe neck. The next plan is to reverse the servos so tilt is fixed to the body and pan fixed to the tilt servo (that makes sense if I had the drawing on me to upload)... If that still looks too long it's going to need the neck cut out and bracket fitted inside the body or head more... It's all about trying different things to find what works and looks right.
@robotmaker, I'm just playing with a bunch of sensors at the moment finding the right ones. I have no thin legs on my furniture so that's not a problem. It's all big and flat.
I'm on the outskirts of the Cotswolds so a few castles around here and a lot of nice scenery. Not too far from Stratford-Upon-Avon (Shakespears birthplace).
@jstarne1, I'm going without the bubble now so his face is exposed.
But, if anyone wants/needs it my email is rich[at]richpyke[dot]net
yes been there nice place,LEEDS castle my favorate, i have lots of chairs in my place with thin legs (bar stools) but the sonar reduce sid slopes not just for thin legs,i guess i didnt add more info on it if sonar has smaller detect zone (side slopes or cone) has a much higher accuracy navigation most problems is the corner of walls ,very hard to detect it,and door ways too pretty easy to make,also you dont use on every sonar only left and right sonars at a angle if using a radar not great 100% percent because first no pinpoint type of sonar ,like reducing side slopes ,second not a great idea to use it on radar because doesnt have a wide angle slope needed so you need both,just some ideas to improve navigation most really good robot builders will tell you for very good navigation you need all types of sensor.IR.sonar,LIDAR ,camera,and thermal and compass ,plus real good codes and a map every made sensor has its good points and bad points i love my maxsonars worlds best sonar for accuracy and super low current ,plus ultrasonic sensor it use is both to send and receive,so takes up less room current is about 3 ma on srf-04 types 35ma,cost it a little high,but i got very lucky instead of the $29.95 i got it for $12 new from a company that going out of business,sorry bought every one they had 30 of them dont thing the ones from china ,same as EZ sells i may not need them will sell them i know my grammar is bad,just no time to fix it
I already have a floormap of my house drawn in AutoCAD which is accurate to a few mm, eventually it may become a complete 3d model furniture and all but I've not had the time to add to it since first drawing it due to my workload. By using that along with calculating the distance travelled in a certain time at specific PWM values for the HBridge that'll be better than any collision detection using sensors (although it will need collision detection to avoid other robots (most likely my "whiskers" robot vacuum which isn't intelligent in the slightest), humans and anything I move or leave lying around... But that's all for future consideration.
This project is to get to grips with the board, with the sensors, with the programming, ARC, EZ-Script and the SDK. It's not a challenging build in the slightest, it's basically one of the run of the mill Omnibot conversions.
In other words, perfect collision detection and object avoidance is not high priority for this build. Future builds may be a different story, my ultimate project I am working up to (life size biped android) will be a different story but that is way in the future and needs a lot of time planning even before the build, calculations to figure out how to balance, how to move lifelike... I could go on but the list of challenges to overcome is already 3 pages and it's only a brainstorming activity at the moment... But I digress, more will come on that bot in a few months/years time.