Inspired by the awesome tutorial by FritsL. Of course, i made my own modifications. I wanted the tread-look to have it crawl around in my livingroom. I salvaged parts from my old Computer Chassi and some parts from my broken 19" LCD Screen.
Of course, this thing falls apart a little bit now and then due to the doubble-sided rubber-tape not being strong enough. The video shown is the first inital test. I think i might have to tweak the AI of course and the amount of turning when encountered with an obstacle.
This stuff is real fun. Gonna be doing more robots in the future.
Stuff to add to this guy:
1. Speaker (He will make noise and play different movie-themes in different situations.)
2. Diodes! (Of course. Need to glow in the dark. Green when pushing forward and red when obstacle is precent)
3. Powerswitch (Gotta make it easier to turn on and off.
4. Something awesome.
Thanks for this great site.
Update:
Added another video using code from Frits. However, while taping this video he managed to update the code :o In this update it also has:
1. Speaker
2. Diode
3. Powerswitch
So i guess all that is left to physically add at this point would be "Something awesome"
Cheers!
Travel around mindlessly. Navigate around via ultrasound.
Cool that you are using SRF05. An advantage is that you can see on the back of it when a pulse is omitted. You can set down the wait time before it’s every move; Just make sure it never moves it’s head while the red light is flashing, or you will get strange readings.
You can get a way more alert rob then (only perhaps it will fall more apart, faster
Dude, your robot is awsome!
And I like the picture, nice to see some 16:9 or what it is - very movie-like! You need to get some better tape though ;D Or perhaps even advance to melt-glue-gun! (they are extremely cheap)
Thanks for sharing, and looking forward to next time!
OH - and PS; You are going to need bumpers if you want it to be able to avoid cables etc. But hey - you have some 11 inputs left, so there should be room for some kind of contact/ sensor if this is what you want
I noticed that during travelling forward, sometimes the servo tend to twitch a bit to the right for no reason. It keeps twitching until it cant twitch anymore. I probably just need to sit down some more with the code.
I have now added the LED and the speaker. They dont do much except make an alert when obstacle is found and it begins the turning-proceedure.
One of the biggest problems right now is that the tape attaching the SRF05 to the Servo loose grip after a while. I need to find a better way of attaching it to the servo.
I will post an update as soon as i have more material to show
Hey, that’s looking good. You can definitely speed up the scanning to make it react faster, as you get more comfortable with it. The sonar pulse takes a maximum of 50ms to be measured (usually less), so it can scan all three directions practically as fast as the servo can move to those places. The measuring itself takes almost no time. Just be sure, like Frits said, that the head doesn’t move while the red light is flashing.
And yeah, hot glue definitely holds things together better than two-sided tape. It IS a step up on the ‘permanent’ scale, but even hot glue can usually be cut off if you change your mind
Interesting. I shall optimize the code right away.
I was also thinking about having it make a 180 turn if all directions are blocked. A hot glue gun may very well be my next purchase. There was a bunch of purchases for me to get started, i had to get soldering equipment and tools and stuff like that.
Does anyone know a good way of making the speaker sound louder? The volume is slightly low at the moment so i kindof want to make it louder
IMHO you should not hard-code 180-turns, but let the robot decide when it is time to turn; try to make it look in the direction it is turning towards, or read this, to put it short
I know you should remember to turn off your speaker afterwards - read this - but turning up volume (without an amplifier) is only possible by selecting a different speaker. There is a HUGE difference in the volume they make.
Wow! That code you had shared there was excellent! Mind if i use it? Its definetly more fluent that way rather than going into a total halt every 10 seconds
And thanks for the warning regarding the speakers. Didn’t know it was like that.
Of course you can use the code, heck! - I think if you look at Part II of "Make your first robot", there is a never version. And I also think there is a slight error in that, and i think I will just get some wood for the fireplace, and in say 15-30 minutes I will have a new corrected version on the site (Just wait for that posting to be top on the site, and you will know I have updated it)
There’s something else I’ve found that can have a dramatic effect on how loud a speaker is. If you’re using just a bare speaker, try cupping your hand around it, to form a sort of tube. The idea is to physically separate the air above the speaker from the air below it. I’ve found that when you do that, many speakers get MUCH louder, especially in the lower frequencies, and they sound much better. Of course, holding your hand around it wouldn’t be a permanent solution, but building a little box with a hole in the top for the speaker to sit in could work. I’ve thought of buying some of those plastic “project enclosures” they have at Radio Shack, and just cutting a hole in the top the size of the speaker and hot-gluing it in.
Let me know if my explanation isn’t clear, I can take a picture of the ‘cupping your hand around the speaker’ thing if you need it. But if you play around with it a bit, you should figure out what I mean.
Oh, sure there are, you can build a simple audio amplifier to make the signal louder, it just gets a little more complicated because there’s more circuitry involved. Try this page for several examples of schematics for audio amplifiers. I’ve never actually built one of these circuits, so I can’t really offer much help other than to point you to the site I’d actually be curious to hear how it goes if you do build one, because it’s something I might want to try in the future.
