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
Dunning-Kruger's Is There A Halloween Contest This Year?
Daman's Yet Another Wall-E
@McJeff0125 I've been trying to figure out what's happening there, I know I've removed the heavy SLA battery but it is much rockier than I though it should be, perhaps the center wheel isn't fitted correctly, it's something on the to do list (even if it's solved by filling the torso with LiPo batteries).
Rich, that looks so cool, do you still have the Luxeon LEDs that I glued in? I think the brain turning bright blue when it sneezed would be very funny! Great job.
I removed them to get the servo for the eyes in there and didn't put them back, but plan to add them back in as I want the brain to change colour depending on mood and possibly even battery level (although suspect having a bight red brain when battery is low will not help conserve battery power).
Now I'm using an I2C LCD (thanks for the tips!) it does give me an extra digital port, which means I have two that can be used for switching the brain lights on and off. If I can free up the third (which may come from not using the ultrasonic sweep servo) then the brain lights will be back in.
I do love the brain lights.
A quick update (because I've now been up for around 40 hours and really need sleep)
The new LCD (4x20) turned up yesterday, I2C and serial. While it had the same issues as the 2x16 LCD through serial (any servos being held randomly twitch) it was easy enough to change to I2C and rewrite the scripts.
Cut the front panels out of some Sintra Board (plastic card) a while ago and fitted them - what I thought was temporary but turns out they didn't want to come back out without some effort. But they come out in the end and today's task was to fit the IR and Ping sensors and the LCD display.
Had to take the whole thing apart to do that so time to label it all up nicely so I know what goes where. And while I was at it I changed the HBridge to a new one since the first would randomly send the robot in circles when powering up (before connection) - however the new one does the same so I suspect it's a flaw in the TB6612FNG Motor Controller. My init script which runs on connection sorts it out but it's still a pain so may change to a different controller at some point.
Also managed to free up some digital ports by not using the sweep servo for the Ping & IR sensors and by using I2C over Serial for the LCD. Which means I may be able to put the lights back in the brain.
Just two more IR sensors to fit at low level, one on each corner if I can get them in, the arms left to do and mount the EZ-B etc. inside and generally tidy up the wires, then it's time for some painting
The idea looks very good RICH hope you share the code as always ,looking to use it for my K9 doctor who dog
Hi Rich,
Looks nice! I mounted ping sensors in the bottom of my Omnibot, in both front corners. A little maneuvering and they slid right in.
Den
Great news as IR are smaller. I need to use IR as ping are somewhat unreliable in my house, but a combination covers all angles. Low level will avoid what causes IR to play up, i.e. sunlight so hopefully it'll work.
Just done a few changes to the LCD Battery Monitor using the custom character generation and ran a test script to set the voltage levels... we like video so here we go...
Next I might write a the script to display ping/IR information to the LCD, but I have other things to get on with too so not sure when that'll come.
Also, you may notice that the panels are not flush by around 1mm, this is on purpose so I can make good, add in some details like what's already on there... hopefully. And yes, the gap to either side of the LCD is only 1mm and was a nightmare to cut! It's double thickness plastic with the back piece slightly larger, the 2 pieces glued together which made it a bit stronger (but I still snapped the corner and had to glue it - not detectable).