Day One: The Box
Hello, my name is Peter. I have been playing with robots for some time now. I have owned a few of the WowWee products, including the original Robosapein. I have had Roombas, Wall-Es, Robbies and many other toys. I like experimenting with Arduino circuits and have done a little with the Raspberry Pi. I owned two of the earlier EZ-Bs v.3, the Bluetooth model. Well, now it’s time I came into the revolution.
I plan to be using the Revolution Six. I hope to undergo a continual exploration of all the things I can do with this robot. And, of course report back, so that others can critique and offer comments. I expect to make quite a few mistakes, but I hope to share these, so that others can avoid some of them. I have a lot of ideas to explore. Some will be very serious and some will be very whimsical. My style is more toward exploring and experimenting that completing a finished robot. The Revolution Six is already pretty complete. My style is also very lighthearted.
All too often I see family members spent hundreds of dollars on a robot, put it together, move it across the floor and then put it away in the closet until next summer. Luckily, I get a chance to buy them at the lawn sale.
With this series of posts, I hope to continually inspire you to try new things with your robot, even if it's only for the fun of seeing things move or light up.
Other robots from Synthiam community
Moviemaker's Well, It Is Obvious That I Did Not Sell My V3,...
DJ's Wii Remote Controlled Robot
Thanks thetechguru and ptp for the great comments. They are helpful and appreciated.
Question - what is the simplest way to turn on a 5 volt digital device using the Digital Write Control? I have some 5v circuits on little boards that I just need to turn on and off under EZ Script control. Should I use a transistor switch and power the little board from its own battery or is there a simpler way?
short answer: yes you can use a transistor, but, not all transistors are equal.
e.g. TIP120 can fit in a scenario where you need to control a Motor or a Light.
Good information about how to wire a TIP120 here: https://synthiam.com/Community/Questions/3050
However, the thread was polluted somewhat by a troll (Robotmaker). For a while his posts were hidden, so it was both easier and harder to read the thread. They are back in now, but most of what he has to say is useless, so just stick with the first two pages of the thread.
The other option is to use a relay board, but typically you would only need that when dealing with higher voltages.
Alan
If you are enabling or disabling a digital circuit not sourcing or powering, you will need to provide a logic level (1) or (0 if inverted logic).
some circuits will accept 3.3v as logic level (1).
To protect the EZB pin, use a 1k resistor between the EZB PIN and the circuit you are enabling/disabling.
if the other digital circuits needs a 5v, you will need a logic level circuit.
One good fit for you breadboard is the SN74HCT:
http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/texas-instruments/SN74HCT245N/296-1612-5-ND/277258
although the ic needs 5v.
don't confuse with the 74LVC245:
http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/SN74LVC245AN/296-8503-5-ND/377483
the 74LVC245 does the opposite converts 5V to 3.3V, one could use to interface to EZB, and use it as input, but, is not necessary EZB pins are 5V tolerant.
https://synthiam.com/Community/Tutorials/163/3
Those circuits are not bi-directional, if you need one you will find cheap ones on ebay.
If you are powering the circuit, the correct transistor family is a mosfet.
A TIP120 is very simple to use, i have a few to interface with motors, fans etc, but is not efficient. Is old tech before Microsoft & Apple.
http://hackaday.com/2015/08/17/you-can-have-my-tips-when-you-pry-them-from-my-cold-dead-hands/
there are a few well know mosfets:
http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/on-semiconductor/NTD4906N-35G/NTD4906N-35GOS-ND/2194521
http://www.digikey.com/product-search/en?keywords=IRLB8721PbF
http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/infineon-technologies-americas-corp/IRF540NPBF/IRF540NPBF-ND/811869
recently i used this: http://www.nxp.com/documents/data_sheet/2N7002.pdf
to turn on/off the XV11 Lidar's motor (100 ma max peek), unfortunately the mosfet is surface-mount only.
@Alan:
Rich's thread make me laugh:
"Useless post, please ignore." .... "Useless post, please ignore."
Did the trolling started in another thread ?
He deleted all of his responses to RobotMaker, and yes, there was a great deal of disruption. It was unfortunate, RobotMaker thought he was helping, but his communication skills were horrible, and he was wrong most of the time but thought he was right, so commented on almost every technical thread with bad advice and then was argumentative about it. This thread you can actually read what he is saying in most of the posts. In other places his spelling and grammar was so bad I thought English was not his first language, but then he said "I just don't have the time to spell check and proof-read" (one of those items I covered in the "why people don't take tutorials" thread. His time was more valuable than ours, so we had to suffer through trying to read unintelligible junk. Unlike someone like Nomad who also has horrible grammar and spelling, but English is not his native tongue, so we are happy to put up with him). He was the first member DJ had to ban who wasn't just a spammer.
For quite a while he was "ghosted" where logged on members didn't even see his posts, but in one of hte web page upgrades all of his posts came back, so if I refer someone to a thread he participated in I give a warning to ignore his comments.
Probably more than you wanted to know, but there it is.....
Alan
That's video is great! The LED Eyes remind me of a robot from Red Dwarf or Farscape