Monday 30 September 2013

A HOG drive, take 2.

For the first time in quite a while, I had a bit of time yesterday to work on one of my bots, and I thought I would spend it on Going Whole HOG. I am still using Lego as my main structural element, because it is so rapid to work with, and, come on, its Lego. I made the gimbal for the motor a lot smaller and sturdier, and used screws for everything except wire management, so hopefully it should hold together better, and I also made the frame twice as thick and much sturdier. I shall be keeping the basic rear gimbal for forward and back, and rasing and lowering the front wheels for steering method that I used on the first one. Some pictures:



I decided to try using the black servo for steering, but it proved to be too week to lift the whole chassis comfortably without strain, so that will be replaced with the orange one I used in the first version.

Saturday 7 September 2013

Goodies :)

I went to a garage sale yesterday and picked up some cool robot-stuff, couple 12 and 24v gearhead motors, a big air selonoid with a control valve with a 120vac air pump (vac/blow), a small camera of some sort and a few bags of roller microswitches:
 That there is a beefy 12 v gearhead motor:
All of that stuff cost less than $10 for the lot of it, man I love garage sales :)

Lego, Lego, and more Lego

I have had these pictures for quite a while, but never really a place to post them, anyway, here are some pictures of my favorite lego builds, from some time ago:

A vertical spinner battlebot using two full battery packs as a weapon driven by 8 old (really old high rpm) motors. Brutal.







A marble sorter that I think is particularly elegant:










 

MSG or Mobile Stuff Grabber, a ROV that could pick up and transport small items around the house:








A lego incarnation of the SHRIMP platform, Version 1 (it did get completed, with NXT bricks etc. but had the unfortunate tendancy to fall over sideways if it just one side went over an object, and so I built version two)












 Version 2:










 
And finally, the largest mobile Lego thing I have ever built, a massive bidirectional sumo bot driven by 12 of those old lego motors I mentioned earlier: