1. is it ok if the solder touched other’s on the board?
2. if i put 4 aa+ battery, it explodes…(jk gets hot and smoke) is it ok if i cut both side of femal-femal wires and use as the
antena?
3. i bought the kit and there was no yellow one, but there was a small black one, says L2930? i cant see that well
do i have to take that off and connect with the chip that was in the kit?
Oh found the name-left over - says 4116R LF
4. what are the long gray wires for(very small and looks like llllllllll… with one red wires…)
last one, 5. if i program it, it says cant fine the hardware. and does nothing if i press reset button… if i put the batteries, the head just moves like 2 cm and thats it…
1. It is ok if they touched during assembly but they should not be left connected or you’ll end up with a short circuit (see below).
2. Hot and smoke is no good. You have a short circuit somewhere that needs to be fixed. I’m not sure what you mean with the F-F jumpers wires and antenna though.
3. The resistor can be yellow or black. The L293D is the motor driver chip. The 4116R LF is the resistor array chip. The 4116 chip replaces the darlington array chip that comes on the board. The L293D goes in the empty socket. Watch for correct orientation on the chips.
4. They are for connecting to the headers on the project board. They are not needed for the Start Here Robot.
5. Your servo will always twitch on power up. It sounds like things still aren’t hooked up quite right so you probably aren’t going to get much more than that. Have you set the serial port on the options menu? You can confirm the connection with the chip through the options menu. Nothing will work at all until you do can at least read the firmware version off your chip.
how do i make the computer/picaxe programmer editor know that there is a hardware connected?
i think doesnt work because i dont have a usb cable driver program? right?
then where do i download that?
when i run program, or click - check firmware - it says whether its not connected, not powered, needs a reset (if i do the steps and run the program, it also says the same thing exept for the last one), and im not using picaxe microceller or something…
also, in my other computer, it says check path? go to files, options, and select a path…=,.= im really pissed off
and when i look carefully to my board, it says picaxe28 not picaxe27 or 28x1 or blah blah blah…please help me:(
Yes, you need the driver for the USB programming cable. It and instructions can be found on the PICAXE site. Once you get that installed and working I think things will start to come together for you. Nothing can progress until you do that though.
It means you have electrical connections where you shouldn’t have them connected. It tends to burn things up when you do that. Make sure the places you solder on your board look like they do in the pictures shown above. The individual metal circles should not be connected together by any amount of solder or short circuits will occur.
Do this before worrying about anything else period.
Hey, please help me on this project! When I copied the program out of here, all my robot did was move forward, then backwards, then forwards, then backwards…etc. Please tell me how to fix this!!
What you do, is take one thing, a simple thing, and make sure it works. Then take the next. If you copy a complete program it almost certainly will not work right away, and this procedure cannot be recommended.
Hello! I just finished building the robot, and the build went quite well. However, I am having trouble programming. I have a couple questions, and they mostly have to do with the Sharp IR Sensor.
1) I ordered the kit from Solarbotics, and the wire for the sharp it came with was red, black, and yellow. However, I have looked closely at the pictures and thought that the yellow wire was the white wire because they matched up where it connects to the sharp, but the wires get switched around on the other side. I am worried I might of plugged it in wrong and fried my Sharp. Could you please give me advice?
2) Whenever I enter in the program in the intructions and change the highs and lows to my wiring, when I program it, all my robot does is look both ways, then spin a tiny bit. Could you tell me what it wrong?
3) when I enter in
main:
readadc 0, b0
debug
goto main
a window pops up, and when I wave my hand in front of the sharp, it flickers between 124 and 135 for the ‘decimal’ column, but it does the same without my hand. Again, this probably has to do with my sharp. Could you help?
4) Lastly, this isn’t really a big deal but sometimes when I am testing my servo it randomly sets the middle “150” at random places. Like one time 150 is facing the front, and a few seconds later it is facing the side. Do you have any idea why?
Thanks you so much, I am new to this and robotics, and I really need help! Please reply as soon as possible.
Question I am busy with a school project and we build this robot. But we where wondering is it possible to make this robot remote controlled? And what would be needed and how can it be done? Thanks in advance.
The easiest way to do it is to use the IRIN command on the robot and the IROUT on your remote control (which will use something like a PICAXE 08M2 or bigger). It uses the same infrared communication protocol that a Sony remote control uses. There is a more detailed explaination in the PICAXE manual 2. You will need another chip (the 08M2 or something suitable), an IR receiver like a TSOP38338, and an IR LED (and its current limiting resistor!) that matches the wavelength detection range of the receiver. In the TSOP38338’s case it likes the 940nm-ish range so look for an LED with that wavelength peak.
My examples link to Mouser because they take care of me but you can find the same kind of receiver and LED on ebay, Radioshack, and many many other places. For the receiver look for the three-pin variety, not the two pin, and with a 38kHz modulation/carrier frequency (it helps to block out background IR noise). Then look for its peak detection frequency in the specs and find an matching IR LED. Some like 940nm, some like 890nm. Either LED will work but it’s a matter of detection range, really.
In manual 2 it shows a circuit schematic for how to wire up the receiver but I’ve found it better to follow the schematic that the manufacturer suggests for whatever IR receiver you end up choosing. You can find it in the datasheet.
1) Yes, the white wire is equivalent to the yellow wire but the connector is set up in a servo configuration which will fry the Sharp IR sensor unless you do as Frits does in the tutorial and do some wire switcheroo-ing.
2) Something is awry. If you’re using Frits’s code than even the 124 and 135 that you say you get should not make it stop and go into avoidance mode. Which leads to…
3) It’s been awhile since I cooked a Sharp IR but it sounds like it might be toast. One test is to power the sensor and use your camera from your phone or whatever to see if the sensor LED still works. We can’t see IR but digital cameras can. IR shows up as a purple glow. If you don’t have a purple glow from one of the “eyes” on the sensor than it’s time for a sensor obituary.
4) The 150 refers to the pulse width of the signal that positions the servo and it isn’t something that changes from day to day or power-up to power-up. Hard to say what the problem is but it’s late and my brain is underpowered right now, however I will sleep on it.
I recommend taking a look at ignoblegnome’s Penny. It’s an Arduino Start Here Robot. It’s not going to be a direct plug-and-play code but a little tweaking of the pin assignments and making the .pde a .ino is all you really need to do.
Thank you so much for all the advice! I rewired the Sharp wire correctly, and luckily it wasn’t fried! It works now, and I can see a purple glow from one of the ‘eyes’ whenever my robot is on. Everything works right, even the weird servo problem is fixed. Thanks once again!
