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
Faengelm's Roli The Climber
Dave's Bimbo The Clown
Seems like it to me. They were talking about tiny differences in output voltages causing one regulator to try to take over. So like you said about having enough "wiggle" room I guess it would not be a problem. And they were speaking of LM7812's not what Rich is going to use. It was just something I was reading about on that link. Here is their statement:
Parallel Connecting Mulitple Voltage Regulators Voltage regulators such as the LM7812 cannot just be connected in parallel without additional circuitry. Each voltage regulator, though nominally rated at the same voltage, will in practice output a slightly different voltage - for example, three LM7812's could output 11.98, 12.01, and 12.06 respectively.
This tiny difference in voltage has the disastrous consequence of making the regulator with the lowest output voltage trying to carry all of the current. This will cause it's internal thermal protection to trigger (as the regulator overheats) effectively removing that regulator from the circuit and kicking off a chain reaction up through the remaining parallel-connected regulators.
Looks like fun, a robot brain running around the room. I like how you have him sneezing. Your robot drives around very well and the head and eyes move great. I am sure you will make arms for him that you will be happy with.
Thanks.
I'm sure I will eventually make arms that I'm happy with, I have ideas and plans but putting them into action is going to take time due to the high cost of my prefered choice (and even then I don't know if it'll work).
I'm taking a little break from it at the moment, concentrating more on scripts, actions, functions and other bits and bobs on the software side... that's when I have the time to do anything, work and other commitments seem to be getting in the way a little at the moment.
wow. your very progressive since I last came and read project hearoid.
i like hearoid.
34 pages! New record!
I seem to have neglected Melvin for the past couple of weeks so tonight I decided to give him a bit more life...
Once he has arms there will be much bigger and better routines but a taste of what's to come is always nice
Very nice! He is looking great!
Very cool Rich! I gotta say ..if it hasnt already been mentioned, your Melvin reminds me of the scifi 1996 movie Mars Attacks! It was made famous for the quirky alien laugh, which was created by reversing the sound ducks make when they quack. Maybe pick up your electric guitar and hit a few bars, then have Melvin perform a " Saturday Night Fever" Humour aside....Thanks for turning on Melvin!
...he's awesome
@irobot58 thanks. Yeah he does look a little like the mars attack guys... and that's just given me the laugh I was looking for
It's been 6 months today since I picked him up... man that time flew by but I've learned so much in those 6 months and looking back through all the photos and posts it's a good motivation booster and, well it's hard to imagine a time when I knew nothing
Hopefully Melvin will be finished before another 6 months is up. He is pretty much there now other than the arms (really must find the motivation for those), lower IR sensors, brain LEDs, a little bit of filling and smoothing and then painting.
Software wise, I added a few more fun scripts last night too but didn't get any video clips yet. But now he can sleep, but has an attitude problem if you tell him to sleep before 10PM. He wakes up from sleeping, but fights it if it's before 9am. And a couple of other little things. One I'm still working on is to make him aware of if I am listening to any of my favourite music or watching a favourite show, and will spontaneously come out with "I love this song" on occasion (that will take some doing and some third party programs transmitting variables through telnet)
Also tweaked the battery monitor LCD output to show a better looking battery as I didn't like the way the right hand side looked (in the video previously posted).
Edit: Oh, and I need to sort the eyes out. The noise sounds louder on the video although it's still loud. The eyes run on just the original motor and a TIP122 transistor circuit, the plastic stops hit each other and make that noise. I may swap the TIP for servo guts and add in the pot for control if I have space (it's really packed behind there) or failing that just pop in a couple of small pads of foam, dynamat, anything to soften the noise. I'm sure I'll think of something