Quadrupeds Need a Whole Lot of Motor Controllers

It’s been a while since my last update on the Quadruped’s build progress, but I finally got my PCBs back for the motor controllers. Since the robot has twelve motors, I need six motor controllers in total (Each of my controllers controls two motors). They’re an updated version of the h-bridge I prototyped last fall, [...]

Syndicated 2009-06-05 04:35:02 from Roko.ca » Robotics

Some Random Stuff

One of my co workers working on a GPS project of his own managed to aquire some Sarantel Helical antennas, and got some for me as well. I’m planning on using them with the U-blox GPS module I have had sitting around. (I origionally bought the GSP module for a MUAV autopilot I’ve been slowly [...]

Syndicated 2009-05-09 16:45:44 from Roko.ca » Robotics

2009 Western Canadian Robot Games I

I spent the second half of last week scrambling to get my mini sumo robot, 1.21 Gw into a working condition for the robot games. I populated the circuit boards mentioned in an earlier post but as I grew low on time I decided to put those aside for this year. Instead of trying to [...]

Syndicated 2009-05-05 18:23:00 from Roko.ca

Mini Sumo PCBs…

After a rushed PCB design marathon, I got my PCBs in last week, built by the good folks at APCircuits. The stencil came in shortly after. Since I made the PCBs into a panel, I had to cut them appart and file down the edges so that it would fit in the chassis. Overall the PCBs turned out nicely. I built them up and can sucessfully load code into the LPC2138. (No pictures of the completed circuit board yet). Things are comming togethor nicely.

You’ll also notice on the silk screen that I have given this robot a more creative name than Mini Sumo Version 6. I now call it “1.21Gw,” pronounced, of course, much as Doc Brown pronounced it in the timeless classic (no pun intended) “Back to the Future”

Now to finish it up and write some basic code for the robot games this weekend.

Syndicated 2009-04-28 17:57:49 from Roko.ca

Angry Sparrows (Aka fixing a driveshaft)

Last year my front drive shaft started squealing. Those of you who know me know my gripes with the local dealership in trying to get this fixed under warranty. On my last visit they went as far as to lie to my face and tell me they inspected it and couldn’t find anything wrong. Long story short, I pulled the drive shaft and replaced the u-joints and centering ball myself. As you can tell from the pictures taken shortly after my last trip to the dealership, they were rather destroyed..  It’s actually a pretty simple process, and a cheap u-joint tool from Princes Auto helped a lot… If only getting a dealership to do a proper warranty repair was this easy….

So, if you hear the angry sparrows a calling from your drive shaft, and lubricating does not help, replace those u-joints!

If you’re looking for a write-up on how to do this, I recommend Stu Offroad’s writeup: http://www.stu-offroad.com/axle/driveshaft/driveshaft-1.htm

Syndicated 2009-04-17 00:57:19 from Roko.ca