Robot 1 - Alfie

Let's Make Robots Robots
1

Hi LMR, first of all I'd just like to thank all of you for this awesome site - I could never have got into robotics if I hadn't discovered this!

Anyway, Alfie is my first ever robot, and although I have done a little programming before, he is also my first experience with electronics, soldering, all of this stuff really. I kept him fairly similar to the start here robot, just omitted the servo and added a downward facing sensor so that he doesn't fall of tables. The chassis is made out of plexiglass/acrylic/whatever you care to call it. I made the mounts for the motors and the SRF05 out of some little bits of scrap metal I had lying about. It's not terribly neat as I used my dad's virtually blunt hacksaw to cut everything, and most of the screws don't quite fit as they were salvaged from various broken electrical appliances that I took apart.

As I had never soldered before, I was a little nervous about ruining the circuit board and dripping hot molten solder everywhere, but it was actually alot easier than I anticipated and everything went very smoothly. The programming was very simple as I didn't want to try anything too complicated on my first robot.

By the way, on the first part of the video, Alfie judders a little when going backwards, as I hadn't yet fixed a slight problem with the wheels. This is fixed on the second part.

Pictures are below -

 

all the stuff :-)

assembled the base

soldered pins

attached the board

attached the wheels

finished!

 

 

Avoids obstacles, tries not to fall off tables

  • CPU: Picaxe 28x1
  • Power source: 3 AA's
  • Sensors / input devices: Sharp IR, SRF05 Ultrasound
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://community.robotshop.com/robots/show/robot-1-alfie
2

Congrats on your first bot

Congrats on your first bot Purple, and welcome to LMR =)

Blunt hacksaw or not, the end result looks very tidy, the plexiglass frame works out well for this bot.

3

He is like a young Frits or mogul. :smiley:

He has eschewed paint sticks/popsicle sticks for plexi. :slight_smile: Recycling is good. And, yes, your robot looks pretty clean.

4

motors

what motors are they and what are there specs i got the exact ones but i dont know what company its from.

5

I don’t know the exact specs

I don’t know the exact specs I’m afraid - they’re just some cheap motors I found in my local hardware store.

6

Haha, thanks, but I’m not a

Haha, thanks, but I’m not a ‘he’ :wink:

7

Thanks, I put the wonkiest

Thanks, I put the wonkiest pieces of plexi at the bottom to get them out of site :slight_smile:

8

My apologies

If you hadn’t noticed this is a rather ‘he’ dominated hobby. :stuck_out_tongue:

Welcome to the site.

**/me goes n sits n the corner quietly now.

9

They look a lot like these

They look a lot like these gear motors from Dagu that they also sell to other stores outside China.

10

:3

Looks really clean and slick, well done on your first robot :slight_smile:

A good way to upgrade it, if you want to keep working on it - mount the distance sensor on a servo, so it can detect obstacles in a wide angle. With good programming you can get it to move around like a pro, smoothly curving it’s way around any obstacle :slight_smile:

Overall a good job, well documented too

11

+1

Just for such a clean build…

12

Thanks for your input - I

Thanks for your input - I did originally buy a servo and was planning to use it in the way that you suggested, but unfortunately I managed to fry it (don’t know how!) and my budget wouldn’t allow me to get a new one. I may try again in the future though.