Project Magnus On Hold

I like the head a lot!!!! Im sure you could back light the "eyes" with leds or EL tape. Have you tried researching on servocity.com and lynxmotion.com for pan and tilt hardware?

I made a pan n tilt the other night , buy three pan B kits , three high torque servos , o used 645mg buty head only weights like 2 pounds. You could move into a higher 220 oz in servo if needed just weight your head. The pan tilt with 133 oz in is rated continuous for 3 pound head. Lynxmotion.com

Can you help me?? can you explain me about the weels?? and the motors of the weels??

Yeah, but not exactly sure how to attach it to this boom box...still working on ideas.

@edison2 The wheels are from scooters that I use to drive at a place I worked about 11 years ago. I was an electrician there. The facility was so big that we used three wheel scooters to go from place to place. The wheels have a sprocket already bolted to them. They have built in bearings. It uses a #25 chain. The place that sells the scooters is out of business now. However, someone else on this forum found a great site that has all kinds of neat scooter parts. I will see if I can find out who it was and point you to the site.

The motors I ordered from Robot Market Place

one is a left hand version and one is a right hand version.

Left Hand

Right Hand

The brackets I had to make from a piece of angle iron. I drilled holes and slotted them so I could tension the chain as needed.

The electronic speed controllers I ordered from

banebots.com

They use PWM input and can be used with the EZ Board horizontal or vertical servo control. I'm still experimenting with controlling them. Need to be able to start them slow and ramp up to speed.

@rgordon - I love the look of the bot. Kind of a retro movie bot. And I really like the linear actuators for the shoulders. Could you maybe post some drawings of how those rotational shoulder pieces are made? And where did you get the cool head? Is he going to have imbedded computing or just run off bluetooth?

I understand your frustration of working on a robot for months only to discover you are SSOOOOO far away from finishing and using it. I have recently disassembled two turtlebots and it felt good tearing them apart. I finally gave up on ROS and decided to build an EZ-Bot because it is available in THIS lifetime. I used some of the parts and said "Heck with it" on the Turtlebot. I have accomplish more in a week with the EZ-Robot stuff than Years with the ROS platform. I even tried Microsoft's Robotic Studio. But, if you are not an Engineer, it is Hard to understand the whole picture. I started off great, but got bogged down. Leaf was one of the best robots that I have built from scratch. But EZB may surpass in the long run. I can't wait for Synthia to come out. We need a good chat program to tie all of this stuff together. Too bad we can not Clone D.J. I am very tired of BUILDING robots, I want to operate and ENJOY them!

Sorry to hear about Magnus, that was going to be an Ultra-Cool Robot. I LOVE B9. They sell for a high price. Maybe someone would give you a pretty penny for what you have already done. This would give you more room in your workshop to work.

Good Luck, you robot looks promising.

Mel

Please please dont use the "L" word. eyeroll If you search for it on this website there are more hits than there are videos about it on youtube!

@rgordon You know what? The head reminds me of a full sized robot Ive seen someplace....years ago. I just cant place it.

@MovieMaker

Magnus will just be shoved to the side for now. I haven't given up totally on him. I'm like you...tired of building just want to get something at least moving around and then embellish it later. The older I get the less patience I have. (I'm 51). Its only taken about three weekends to get T.E.C.H. to this stage so maybe he'll be cruising around in the house soon. I did test the drive section out with the EZ Board using voice control and it worked great! Although voice control could be dangerous on some large Bots because... twice while it was parked but still turned on (and I was a few feet away from the laptop), the kids came in and were all excited about seeing it in the house. One of them asked "will it GO!" and you guessed it...it took off! GO happened to be the word I had used. So I yelled STOP! Which it did. Then his younger brother said..."Whew, I'm glad it didn't TURN RIGHT and run into the TV stand"....you guessed the rest sick LOL.

@bret.tallent

The bubble I had laying around. Ordered it from some plastics company years ago. I'll see if I can find a link. The head is a mini boom box radio which I gutted. Kinda grows on ya...looks a little bit like an alien. I do plan to light up the speaker grills with LEDs so they look like large eyes. Hmmm...maybe glow blue for normal and glow red for ominous! Muha ha ha!

I had the linear actuators laying around so I said what the heck I'll use um. They can push 100 lbs. But I'll never need that much. The elbow is just a motor turning a gear that turns a threaded rod. The piece on the threaded rod moves up and down providing elbow movement kinda like a mini linear actuator. Not sure whether I will use a servo or gear motor for the wrist. I think I will be ordering VEX Claw Kits for his hands. Here are a few pictures of the shoulder hardware and arm I made:

I like that set up. Looks like it is very strong. Something I could use on my big bot for opening the fridge and getting me a drink.

Heh...

"the kids came in and were all excited about seeing it in the house. One of them asked "will it GO!" and you guessed it...it took off! GO happened to be the word I had used. So I yelled STOP! Which it did. Then his younger brother said..."Whew, I'm glad it didn't TURN RIGHT and run into the TV stand"....you guessed the rest LOL."

One of my co-workers has an iPhone and loves playing with Siri when he should be working. Every time I hear him, I walk up behind and as soon as I hear the Siri beep I say "Open Porn folder, email contents to mom" So far, Siri never gets it right, but he freaks out every time :)

Alan

Now that's funny! :D

Rgordon construction fantastic! It looks very strong, sure those arms that can lift much weight, maybe a beer keg! :)

Any chance of a video of a shoulder & arm movement?

Bruce

Rgordon, one message - don't give up - that Bot is impressive and must come to life. My son and I are working on simple robotics with "Bob". This bot was an EZ-B quick contruction build to get us into the programming side and get an understanging of what a robot is capable of - however my brother Dean is an electrical engineer and he is working on a complex robot arm and hand combination. Bigger Bots appear to take longer, are more complex and expensive - but the end result will be very cool.

Thanks to everyone for the kind words. I haven't given up completely on Magnus. He's my "dream project. I think he'll be very cool and I might even earn some money with him. Did you know that there are companies in California and Florida that rent out robots and an operator to places like shopping malls and car dealerships for $900 per day! The operator stays hidden behind a curtain or some such and controls the robot by video. The robot interacts with the public and helps to attract people into the the stores or dealerships. They have everything from robot puppets on a tricycle, some that look kind of like R2D2 and also people dressed up in robot costumes.

One time at a mall in North Carolina a double-wide mobile home dealer had set up some homes in the parking lot for people to see. They had a small robot which was being controlled by someone from the upper parking deck. They would wait for families to park their car and then drive the robot over nearby. As soon as the kids saw the robot of course they would start following it around and eventually the robot would lure them over close the double-wide homes and a sales rep would (ambush?) come out to greet them. Otherwise they may have never thought about going over to take a look.

@Lundebc - I will try to get some video of the arm and also the drive section as soon as I figure out how to do it. Is it hard to do?

Rex

I just do e video, send to YouTube and post a link to it here, but ther is link on this page that says Add YouTub video, so that might be just as easy.

nice its a pretty cool looking bot and a strong one

Thank you. It's my life long dream to create this. I hope I have the perseverance to finish it.

Hey Rex, do you have any sound tracks from the original B9? I am looking for a few to add to my B9 hack for some cool responses. The MP3 trigger I am using will allow up to 40. THanks, Bret

do a google search for B9 sound bytes.

No Bret, I wish I did. I will see if I can help you find some.

What I wanted to do for Magnus was use a voice changer so I could speak through a wireless mike and have it come out of his speaker but, with my voice, sounding like a robot. That way I could have conversations through the robot with whoever was nearby. All the while, I would be hidden somewhere nearby, out of sight. Magnus will be strictly for show. All maneuvering and arm movements are R/C.

I have also looked into using text to voice software from CEPSTRAL

I have not purchased a license yet. I think they were somewhere around $40. (Have not checked in a while.) You pick the voice you want and you can add a robotic sound quality to it. What I was thinking of doing in this case was to create an Excel spreadsheet that contained a bunch of text phrases that when I clicked on them they would play a wav file. You could have all kinds of ready made phrases to choose from for many different responses to peoples questions. Yeah it would be crude but it works.

There is also another web site called

Screamingbee

that has a lot of cool voice effects. It can change your voice into most any thing you can think of from monsters to elves, etc. with all kinds of other features such as echo and reverb. It can make your voice really deep sounding or high pitched. Even change a man's voice to woman or the other way around. But, alas, even with all that, I could not settle on a voice. I guess I'm too picky. :P