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
DJ's So, I Taught Jd How To Play The Piano
Rb550f's Ez Robot Rover
@irobot58 Funny you should mention mars attack, I did this for fun a few years back!
Rich, on the eye noise you could try reducing the voltage to the eye motors, this may make for softer operation and could look better. A series resistor in the motor feed of the right value (and wattage) is one way, also you could use series connected diodes you will drop around 0.7V per silicon diode, so 2 diodes in series would drop around 1.4V etc. Schottky diodes will drop around 0.3V per diode. Hope this helps.
Yeah I did think that too. I did use PWM originally with some interesting results, i.e. half closed eyes... but the buzzing noise from the motor was more annoying than the noise of the clunk so scrapped that idea. I may try PWM scripting to get it close at the right PWM then ramp up to 100% and hold with a Set(D9,on). It's something I need to play with really and anything that needs changing will be done when the head is cracked open again to fit the LEDs (or possibly BlinkMs) back in to it and the mouth LEDs which I forgot to put back after I fitted the camera.
Damn, certainly should have been on more.
A small update on Melvin
I just secured a BlinkM (thanks ThingM) so now his brain will be lighting up dependant on mood
It also gives me a great opportunity to play with the I2C script commands to make the BlinkM do some cool patterns and stuff. If it works nicely enough I may use them on Jarvis too. The downside is I need to take the head apart to fit it, and it's not the easiest thing in the world to put back together.
It's about time I showed some love to Melvin, he must be getting a bit jealous lately with my time being spent on Jarvis... So the BlinkM has come at the right time
And yes my robots have emotions, even if they are make believe
I'm also planning on hitting them arms for the fourth time soon. It's pretty much all that's left to get sorted before I can get him all painted up nicely.
Just looking through all of the photos I've taken along the way and you don't realise the progress made until you look back at the first photos compared to now. A nice little slideshow is being produced but it's around the 15 minute mark, 10% complete in half an hour so I guess it wont be uploaded until tomorrow morning (if I get chance before work). The slideshow didn't turn out as well as I had planned so will be redoing it when I have more time.
IROBOT i am working on a hearoid design kinda like this one only a lot more better upgrades. Once i get back on the forum very soon from beening a GHOST USER will be posting photos. DONT care for the head design he is using,so i have better plans
I did so much work on my robots while i am ghost user.
My BlinkM turned up yesterday so hopefully this weekend I'll be fitting it in Melvin's head for his "moods"
Although before that it needs to be used in Jarvis as part of his colour picking routine
More to come this weekend hopefully...
The video speaks for itself really