Introducing Questor.
I put a hold on my large robot project Magnus awhile back due to budget and time constraints. I wanted to have a platform that was way smaller, easy to modify for testing purposes and small enough to roam around inside the house autonomously. Questor will serve as a test platform for systems that will eventually be placed in Magnus. Questor was not intended to be a cool looking robot platform, just functional and very basic in appearance. My main goal is for him to be autonomous with the option of me being able to take over remote control separately if needed. I would like for him to be able to automatically find and connect with his battery charger and to eventually have a good A.I.
So here is a first look at him...
Weird....the pictures below [b]this line were not intended to be here in this first post. When I made the new post below, it saved the pictures in this post also. When I tried to go back and edit them out of this first post they don't show up on the thread so I can delete them. They belong in the post below....see details for the new wheels in the later post.[/b]
Other robots from Synthiam community
Foamtastic's Working On A Baby Dragon.
Lizpoir's Video From My Omnibot 2000 An From My 3D-Printing...
Hooked up and tested the CF Sound III yesterday. It has a 50 watt built in amplifier and can play up to 255 wav files. This thing is packed with all kinds of neat features. The CFSound III comes with two contact inputs built in, and one PTT(Push To Talk) output relay built in. You can add up to 48 contact inputs and/or up to 16 contact outputs by installing up to two I/O modules in the CFSound III. It sounds great. Now to figure out if ARC can control it via its serial port.
CF Sound III
CFSoundIII/CFSound_III_Users_Manual
@rgordon your quote "Questor was not intended to be a cool looking robot platform, just functional and very basic in appearance".
What are you talking about, Project Questor is a #1 excellent robot. I just hope my final robot is half the robot Questor is.
@rgordon I really like the voice lights and the fact you used a flash light. That would be prefect for my bot, care to share how you did it.
@Tymtravler Thanks so much for the kind words.
As for the voice lights, I removed the little circuit board out of the flash light and will be using a TIP122 Transistor circuit (see Rich's Tutorialon it). Then I can use the Sound servo control in ARC to modulate the LED's with Questor's voice. I'll keep you posted on how it works.
I look forward to seeing this bumper sensor your making, I just picked up supplies to start that area of mine but I would like to see one work
Josh,
I'll bring my prototype bumper switch to the Maker Fair. It is really simple. Just need to make it look nice.
Update: Hooked up a power switch for the motherboard and established a connection with ARC.
Encountered a problem with the motherboard. When I turned on the CFSound system, the motherboard turned off. If I turn on the CFSound system "first", then power up the motherboard, all is fine. I measured the power going to the motherboard and turned on the CFSound to see if it is causing the power to dip enough to cause the motherboard to power off. I only see it drop by 0.1 volt. Both are hooked to the main 12V regulator which is rated for 10 amps so I would not think there would be a problem here.
Any ideas anyone?
Also ----Rich I have a TIP31 transistor. Would this work with the Sound servo control to make Questor's voice lights flicker or is there something special about the TIP122 you used?
Rex
@rgordon I love this robot! You've done such a great job with all the placements of each part and the wiring looks very neat and well thought out. It all looks very professional.
Something that really stands out for me is the CFSound 3. I'm using this also in my B9 Robot (along with a MP3 Trigger) for the voice. I love the relays that are built into the CFSound 3. They let me not only trigger sound files, lights and motors when EZB is not active but I'm also using the relays to let switches and buttons activate scripts in ARC when EZB is active. I've got EZB ADC ports watching relays on the CF3 that are in turn attached to switches on B9. So when a button or switch fed with 5vdc is engaged, CF3 will activate its relay that's attached to it. Then the EZB ADC port that's attached to the relay will see the change in voltage and run any script I want. Very cool.
Another fun factoid; In Gene Rodenberry's The Questor Tapes clip you shared with us (thanks) the woman scientist you see is Gene Rodenberry's wife Major Barrett. She not only was the nurse on the first Star Trek series and aST few movies but was also the Enterprise's computer voice for almost all the different Star Trek TV shows. Also, the other male scientist is Mike Farrell of MAS*H fame (but I'm sure everyone knew that).
Thanks! Dave Schulpius