John doing metal work |
Anyhoo, after a bit of work, here's the first fruits of our labour:
Our first motor with it's main hole drilled in the aluminium frame |
The motors output a lot of torque, so we couldn't just mount them on the balsa wood that makes up the bulk of the Mm Bot's chassis. These guys needed mounting on solid Aluminium, which is bolted (along with the motors) to the inside of the robot. Annoyingly I'm still suffering from bolt shortages. There's so many different crazy sizes, in both empirical and metric, with different heads and lengths and names. Then as the cherry on top, everything needs a different one, and nothing tells you what it needs. Grrrr.
Motors and wheels attached to chassis |
Next up it was time to start layering components in the robot to see if everything fits. Here's step one with the Arduino and the Sabre Tooth motor controller that finally arrived in the post.
Mmmm Bot chassis with motors, wheels, Arduino and Sabre Tooth motor controller |
You might have spotted that the Arduino isn't the same one I've been using up until now. This is the Arduino Uno's bigger brother - the Arduino Mega! With lots of extra pins and multiple hardware serial ports it'll support more sensors and be able to communicate faster.
Next up, I add the circuitry layer, which still has the Arduino Uno attached:
2nd layer of Mmmm Bot, with prototyping board that sits above motors and Arduino |
This massive prototyping board allows me to fiddle with the circuitry to my hearts delight, which is exactly what we need to develop our first robot.
Finally, just to get an idea of what version 1 will look like, I plonk my prototype sensor platform on the top:
Mm Bot 'fully assembled' on the floor |
Mm Bot making eye contact (kind of) |
That's all for now. Hopefully by the end of the weekend Mm Bot will be wondering around, remotely controlled by the PC and doing simple tasks like not quite bumping into walls.
-Chris
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