This is the robot I built to solve the Towers of Hanoi puzzle . It uses three rc servos and a Picaxe 08M . This is the first time I've used the picaxe but I have experience with pics and basic programing .
The arm is constructed mostly with leftovers from my rc plane hobby . The rotation and elevation are done with two 15 year old worn out servos . They are double sided taped together with the rotation servo output arm screwed to the wooden base . The elevation servo arm has a balsa stick taped to it . The gripper is made from 2 identical gears I salvaged from something . The fingers are balsa hot glued to the gears . Sandpaper glued to the fingers helps grap the disk . A paperclip pushrod pulls on the gears with a wheel collar spring setup to avoid stalling the servo .
The Picaxe 08M is on a Radio Shack project board . The servo signal lines are driven through 330 ohm resistors by the Picaxe .The programming is done through a Sparkfun FT232RL USB to Serial breakout board . The servos are powered directly from 4 AA batteries . Two1N4001 diodes drop the voltage to about 4.8 volts for the Picaxe .
The program is adapted from a program in the book "Artificial Intelligence Projects For The Commodore 64" by Timothy J. O'Malley . I Bought the book around 1985 . The program uses 235 of the Picaxe's 256 bytes .
The arm works better than I thought it would considering the servos are old , weak , and jittery . The arm is short and that causes problems picking the disks up without hitting the posts . I had to do a lot of tweaking to get it to work and it still leaves a disk on top of a post about once in 15 moves . I will include the picaxe program if anyone is interested .
Updated 5-15-2011 I have added the program hanoi_ser4.bas to the attached files . This program prints the stacks to the terminal window so you can run it in the simulator or on a picaxe without the servos . It can solve for 3 to 8 disks . I also added a schematic .
The picaxe 08M is one of my favorite toys and I’m allways trying to thing of ways to squeeze more program into that nifty little chip. Who would have thought that not only the solution to the towers of hanoi, but actual moving of the pieces could fit in 235 bytes.
On top of that: you even honoured the great spirits of LMR by using old and weak servos and by building the grippered arm with sticks and glue and tape.
Thanks for the kind words . I started out in electronics with Forrest Mims ‘Engineers Mini-Notebook’ on the 555 timer so I’m amazed at what can be done with an 8 pin chip nowdays . I have done several small projects with the pic 12f series using assembly language but basic is a lot more fun . I would have used new servos but I am cheap so don’t tell the great spirits .
Many Thanks for sharing, very very nice i am trying to make the picaxe robot with the picaxe08m2 microcontroller, but i just can´t burn the pic axe, i think it is because of i am using the picaxe 08m2 in place of the picaxe08m but i can not get the picaxe08m , only i am able to get the picaxe08m2, could you help me please, many thanks again, sincerely, rafa
Many Thanks for sharing, very very nice i am trying to make the picaxe robot with the picaxe08m2 microcontroller, but i just can´t burn the pic axe, i think it is because of i am using the picaxe 08m2 in place of the picaxe08m but i can not get the picaxe08m , only i am able to get the picaxe08m2, could you help me please, many thanks again, sincerely, rafa
seems like it needs to be a new forum posting. It will get more eyes on it, if it is new posting. You will want to add as much relevant information to your posting, so, people will be able to offer useful information to you to help fix your issue.
I believe the 08m2 will work but I haven’t tried it . What hardware and software are you using to program the chip ? You will need the Picaxe Programming Editor (free from Picaxe.com) and the USB programming cable (not free) . A Pic programmer like the Pickit won’t work .
