Recently I purchased a used Phoenix Heapod from someone on EBay. It is missing two leg assemblys, and the remaining legs all have HS-322HD servos installed(please see pics below), and no electronics. I got a pretty good deal on it and now I am going to start rebuilding it from scratch. What I have for the servos are 18 HS-645MG’s and I ordered a pair of replacement legs as well as a wireless PS2 controller, ARC-32 board, as well as some other misc parts. To power the servos I bought a Venom 7.4VDC 8000Mah Lipo battery pack along with a Castle Creations BEC Pro (20amp). I also have a small Lipo pack for the ARC-32.
I am wondering for those who have/had a Phoenix, did you or have you run into any problems putting this together, or any tips??
My hope is to get this built over the weekend, however I am not sure if I am going to need anything else to make this operational.
Well I finally finished rebuilding my Phoenix hexapod last night, I found that the tibia’s that I already had have threaded holes for the servo mounts, the new Phoenix leg kit I ordered the tibia’s do not have threaded holes, but I do not see any other differences there. I did run into a problem trying to figure out where the mount that 8000MaH LiPo pack, in order to use it I would have to mount the arc32 board on top of the robot or mount the LiPo back to the bottom of the robot, I just ended up using a 6vdc NiMh 4200Mah pack instead. The LipO would definately give me more runtime, but there’s not much room on this robot.
Once I get my batteries are charged up this morning I guess I need to get these servos setup and some software going, are there any good programs out there for aligning the legs/servos for the phoenix?
From your description, it sounds like you are going to use the Arc32 for your phoenix and probably not an SSC-32. If that is the case then my Arc32 Phoenix code has code in it to help zero the servos. Once the program is downloaded, bring up a terminal window associated with you comm port and you should see some instructions. But you can hit the O key to enter into the offsets mode…
Wow, this is an EXCELLENT program!! I am using just the Arc32 board with the phoenix. It’s been a few years since I played around with a hexapod(okay maybe like 5 or 6, and this one is 3dof verses 2dof!). I had to re-wire the servos as when I put it together I had used the Lynxmotion guide. I am a big fan of controlling robots via WiFi(b/g). I plan on hooking up a Lantronix matchport b/g(2 serial ports) to my Hexapod at somepoint as soon as I get the hang of things with the phoenix.
I didn’t see this in your code, but what about a feature that would monitor the voltage from S1 & S2? My thinking is that once the set voltage point (user configurable) was hit, the robot would stop or make warning sounds…
Thanks, but please note: 90+% of the credit should go to Xan and Zenta. Xan who wrote the original phoenix code and Zenta who figured out a lot of the Kinematics and put all of the information into an Excel spreadsheet. I just did the fun parts of adding the DIY remote/xbee control code, plus some assembly language support to speed things up, and then I had the fun of making it work on the Arc32 and since the serial input/outputs SIN/SOUT were on a hardware serial port I added all of the terminal code and found a way to download and run sequences… Been having some fun.
I have not put in the code to monitor the voltages yet, I believe Zenta did on his as he uses LIPO batteries. I believe he has his report back the voltages to his DIY remote control that is than displayed on the LCD display. I also thought about adding similar and also have it make a warning sound.
Using the Lantronix matchport sounds like fun. I thought about doing something like that once but I think I fried mine as I gave it +5v…
I did the same thing a while back to a matchport, the issue I had was finding a decent carrier board for it, I tried making a couple, but they came out pretty bad, I found a place that you can buy a carrier board that also has a 3.3vdc regulator built into it so you can use a power supply from something like 5-18vdc, haven’t ruined a matchport since…
The only downside to the matchport b/g is the current draw when in operation, it can get pretty high, but then again with lipo packs, it’s not as much as an issue anymore.
