New custom hexapod - Kodama!

Hey everyone, as promised, here are pics of my new hexapod project. I’m new to this forum, and robotics in general, but after seeing the amazing work of Zenta’s Morphex and A-Pod and everyone else here, as well as Matt Denton and his IC Hexapod, I became inspired (nay, obsessed!) to build my own.

Here in Phoenix there is a hackerspace called heatsync. The people there are great, and have given me a lot of help as well as access to their laser cutter! I’ve made the parts out of acrylic, which I frosted and painted. I’m just heading back there tonight for a slight redesign, but I’m getting close!

I would love to hear any comments or suggestions to make this thing better.

[EDIT: I have chosen a name: Kodama. It is the name of the Japanese tree spirits that inspired its face.]

A freshly cut robo-leg!

In the background you can see the arduino and breadboard running my “good and evil mode.”

For some reason I keep being forced to re-login every time I try to post a picture. Will try again later.

Very cool, I really like the black on frost contrast. How do you frost the acrylic like that?

As for a name, good luck. I’ve been working on my quad project for over a year and still don’t know what to call it.

Thanks! The frosting is a spray from Rustoleum: rustoleum.com/CBGProduct.asp?pid=106

I was worried about how it would turn out, but it seems to have worked ok. I got some kind of spray paint formulated for plastics like acrylic, and that is working nicely on the accent pieces.

Duane

Tibias complete! I can’t wait to see them attached to the legs, but I have to redesign the hip joint a bit. Parts are being cut tonight at the hacker space!

Calibrating servos. Yeah, I didn’t know what the heck I was doing, so I’ve got to do this all again once I’ve got the robot built.

Gentlemen, I’m getting PUMPED about this robot.

Last night I worked on designing how everything will sit inside the main body. I have an awesome and clear concept for a modular-brain hex, but the complexity would ramp up exponentially. Since this is my first attempt, I think I will build it the traditional way first and plan the modular brain concept for a future iteration. What do you guys think?

Welcome to the forum.
I agree, the frosted look I really nice. Be great to see it complete, then I think it will be easier to name. I think going down the traditional roots would be best, then working in your own ideas will be easier.

Again nice hex, look forward to seeing more.

Ps, flip those images upright. Its ok to view these on my tablet as I can rotate it. Pc is not as easy. Lol
:wink:

How’s the setuping… :wink:

Very, very nice.

Using the laser cutter at the Phoenix hacker space for v2 parts!!
Also, introducing my wife and son :slight_smile: he obviously loves it there


Weird, the pictures are rotated properly on my iPhone and iPad but not in safari.
Sorry guys, hate to give you a crink in the neck!

Looking forward to seeing it progresses. Design looks quite nice.

The face of my robot, displaying “evil mode.” Apologies if this is rotated in a strange direction, for some reason I can only post to this forum with my iPad.

Getting closer. I’ve got a cool video of good/evil mode which I’ll post later. Got a little stymied by lack of hex spacers. Next step is to zero out all the servos before putting the leg assemblies on.


A quick update, I’ve finished construction of the robot, but haven’t gotten any great pictures yet.
Can I not upload videos?

Also, I am thinking of naming the bot “Kodama” after the tree spirits in Princess Mononoke that inspired the face.

Here is a quick pic of Kodama. I have also updated all the pics in this thread so that they are rotated the right way. Intel blocks my Internet at work, so everything was done with my iPad.
Next step is PS2 controller, followed by arduino-ssc32 libraries. If anyone has any tips on these things, I’d love to hear them!!

Looking good!

For PS2 control, most of us use the PS2X library by madsci… Lynxmotion has a split of it that they have up on:
github.com/madsci1016/Arduino-PS2X

For SSC-32 control, there may be libraries, but I have simply worked by outputting text to a serial port.

Also it would not take much time to adapt current Phoenix code to your configuration. You would simply need to define which pins are connected to what, sizes, angles, mins/maxs. My version of the Arduino phoenix code is up on gihub as well.

Again looking great.

Kurt

Hi,

Looking good! :smiley:
I’m a bit worried about the femur length vs the femur servo torque. What’s the femur length and is the femur servo a HS-485HB? Also, what’s the total weight of the robot?