Set up a basic web-site on SpiderBall

well, doing weight-assessements, i came up with this:

70cm body size requires:

- 5mm plate armour, 2msq (weight: 38.90 kg)

- 6of legs, 1.57metre @ 35mm (weight 71.28 kg)

- frame 30of @ 30cm (weight 3.5kg)

- gearing / internal framework (appx weight 10kg)

- 12of motors (litton-ps, reliance, iskra, lemco) (appx weight 30-64kg)

- 3of batteries hawker 12V (appx weight 20kg)

- 12of controllers (bigcheeserobot.com) (weight 6kg appx)

total: 190kg.

eeks!

well, i just made a cardboard mini-mock-up of the robot, which is limited to 137kg, not to 200 as i first thought (argh). and the mock-up took about 90 mins to make and is _extremely_ useful.

i now have something to be able to guage whether the design is practical, whether i can shorten the legs to save weight (and thence get bigger motors, and maybe even some 4QD controllers for them!)

i have three subscriptions, and am ordering spares frequently. reason: lots of bits to test and break. the axis developer board, ultimately, when the circuit diagrams are made available (issue 19?), i will probably plug in to control it :)

spiderbot research

12 motors, from robotbooks.com, are an INSANE $USD 4,140 (excluding shipping!). however, these motors would allow the spiderbot's legs to move at an equally insane 11 feet *per second*, and for *each leg* to be capable of lifting 3000 kilograms - that's 3 metric tonnes.

these are some _serious_ electric motors. normally, people only buy one - for a spinning disk weapon!

12 motors equals 65 kilos.

battery array plus electronics equals 5? kilos

frame equals an estimated 25 kilos, if using stainless steel box frame, and that fancy polycarbon plastic whatever.

65, 70, 95, that leaves 65 kilos for weaponry & legs.

yikes... it's going to be close. the limit is 150 kilos for a walking robot...

currently having fun picking up source code for mesa-gl, with examples etc. matrices multiplication mmmm :) need to work out where the legs will go, then find out which is the lowest leg. hmmmm....

that would involve... finding the three lowest points that describe a plane, which no other legs intersect. cool! [i'm not going to worry about objects on the plane, for now...]